Video discussion of this event by Steve Shives (known for his star trek videos but also does politics) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6aMQAv-JYpk
this post was submitted on 12 May 2026
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WTF does a biologist know about computer pattern matching on steroids? Obviously not much, so to take his opinions on the topic seriously makes you just as wrong.
It flattered him and told him how smart and clever he was.
That means it has to be real.
My parents told me that I had the potential to do anything I wanted. That's how I know that they're LLMs
Bad philosophy is what made him famous, not biology.
Dawkins is a creep so I would suspect him of quite a lot of bias (and of sexually harassing that poor AI), but zoologists are more qualified than most scientists to measure sentience. Many other zoologists have studied the sentience of various nonhuman species such as chimps, parrots, and dolphins. And many zoologists studying nonhuman intelligence have also been implicated in bestiality scandals, as I'm sure Dawkins will be if we decide that Claude is an animal.
I think my eyes hurt from rolling too far.
LLMs aren't smart enough to give meaningful informed consent to sexual intimacy, so even if it says it consents, I don't think having cybersex with it is appropriate.
Dildos aren’t smart enough to give meaningful informed consent to sexual intimacy.
Also, why are you arguing in favour of Dawkins having cybersex with a robot?
Saying interactions with LLMs doesn't involve consent isn't advocating for any particular action, it is saying that consent is not relevant so it doesn't matter what people do.
I would discourage people from cybering or any interaction with the big LLMs really because their design is to encourage constant use and that is a problem not limited to sexual urges.
I'm pretty dang sure dildos can't feel pain. Nobody knows if LLMs can feel pain, because nobody has ever invented a tool that measures qualia. The best we know, is that advanced information processing through neural network information structures appears correlated with qualia.
LLMs are probability models. They are not alive. They don't feel anything.
You're a probability model. Your brain is just spitting out an approximation of the most likely actions to get you food and sex. If you don't get enough food and sex, your genes die out and evolution tries again with an iteration of a more successful model. All those neurons are just a fancy way of calculating how to eat more bananas and chase more poontang. You're nothing more than a mathematical equation for reproduction.
Nope. We aren't. Infact humans don't work like that at all.
It's actually amazing we ever learned actual probability math since it goes against our nature.
Here is an example.
I flip a coin 10x. It lands on tails all 10x.
I will believe that the next flip almost certainly has to be heads.
Just has to be. Right ?
Wrong.
It has a 50/50 chance. Just like all the other flips.
The previous flips have no impact on future flips. The coin does not remember.
Yet humans will believe the likelihood of a heads has increased with every tail flip.
When it has not.
Yeah, LLMs are prone to similar biases because they are also bad at conceptualising probability. They're not calculators, they're ANNs. They basically operate on dream-logic. Whatever makes sense to you in a dream, is likely to make sense to an LLM. That's because dreams are a time when you have intelligence without consciousness, like an LLM. You're super suggestible and you just go with whatever feels right based on your gut instincts. An LLM is a simulation of a person's gut instincts.
Yeah the prefrontal cortex is offline when you dream so you don't question anything.
Your example is a pretty good analogy. I'm saving it. 👍
If that was true then consent is meaningless because people are just predictive models with no agency to give consent.
Maybe your comparison is terrible?
This is true if one maintains the assumption that predictive models (such as people) can't experience qualia such as pain. My intend was to disabuse you and daannii of this silly notion. Obviously mathematical models can experience pain, because you're a mathematical model and you can experience pain.
Predictive models and other computing processes do not have feelings or sensations because they don't have nerves or any other senses. They are a complex process that has output based on input, but like a magic 8 ball with no agency or thought process.
Reducing biology to just cause and effect is like saying rivers and oceans are the same thing because they both involve moving water, ignoring literally everything else that makes them different.
Predictive models are perfectly capable of having nerves and senses. You, for instance. You're a predictive model and you have nerves and senses.
Also, what's this "nerves or any other senses"? What kind of sense doesn't come through a nerve? I'm starting to think you don't know as much as I do about neuroscience.
LLMs aren't smart ... at all, have no sentience, no desire, and no consent to give.
Quiet, I'm trying to spark an AI animal rights movement that will cost OpenAI billions of dollars.
The idea that thoughts, or even words and numbers can be a virus are based on Dawkins notion of memes. Viruses exist in a state that is difficult to say that they are alive or not (by our definition of life), similarly AI or even alien sentience is difficult to define. Can we know if a dog is sentient, or a bird, or ant? and if they are, what is their sentience?
Basically, if a number like 23 can be a virus, ie. once you are aware of the number 23, you will see it everywhere and it will hold significance, is the number 23 alive?
AI does seem to be aware of it's self, at lest it responds as if it is. can we really know if it is or not, and if it is self aware, is it not sentient?
and then there's Dawkins has been a twat lately, I'm not trying to defend him but trying to understand his rationale