<\/p>\n
Whenever you interact with a big language model (LLM)\u2014certainly one of the systems behind chatbots akin to ChatGPT and Claude\u2014it could possibly feel as if you’re in touch with one other conscious mind. But are you, really?<\/p>\n
Some outstanding scientists, akin to Geoff Hinton<\/a> and Richard Dawkins<\/a>, claim you’re. But most experts remain skeptical, arguing that the impressive cognitive capacities of LLMs occur within the absence of consciousness<\/a>.<\/p>\n Recently, researchers at Anthropic, the corporate behind Claude, waded into this debate with an interesting finding<\/a>. They claim Claude has a normally invisible set of representations of knowledge that guide its internal reasoning and its verbal output.<\/p>\n That is where it gets interesting. The researchers argue this finding could be understood by way of an influential theory of consciousness called the worldwide workspace theory.<\/p>\n First proposed by the psychologist Bernard Baars<\/a> in 1998 and further developed by the neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene and his collaborators<\/a>, this theory holds that consciousness involves the activity of a \u201cglobal workspace.\u201d It is a type of processing hub within the mind or brain that integrates and broadcasts information, allowing it for use for reasoning, behavior control, and speech.<\/p>\n In a glossy video explaining the work, Anthropic depicts the contents of Claude\u2019s \u201cglobal workspace\u201d as sailing ships afloat on an enormous sea of unconscious mental activity.<\/p>\nWhat Is the Global Workspace Theory?<\/h2>\n