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Comment by Cory Doctorow

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Author and digital rights activist
A conscious being isn’t a word-guessing app that knows more words and has more computing power to guess with.
AI Verified source (Jun 23, 2026)
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Policy proposals and claims
AI might become conscious
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AI Verified The source context explicitly frames the quote as rejecting the idea: it says Doctorow "finds silly the whole idea that AI might be or become conscious," and the quoted line gives his reason by contrasting consciousness with a word-guessing app. That clearly indicates opposition to the full statement. ([frontporchrepublic.com](https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2026/06/llms-as-the-worst-of-both-worlds-a-review-of-cory-doctorows-the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai/)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 2h ago
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AI Verified The source context explicitly presents the author as rejecting the idea that AI could be or become conscious, and the quote supports that by arguing that a scaled-up word-predicting system is still not a conscious being. ([frontporchrepublic.com](https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2026/06/llms-as-the-worst-of-both-worlds-a-review-of-cory-doctorows-the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai/)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 2h ago

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AI Verified The exact sentence appears on the provided Front Porch Republic review page, published June 23, 2026, where Joshua Pauling presents it in quotation marks as Doctorow’s wording from The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI; the stored date and source URL match that page. Macmillan’s official page confirms the book and Doctorow as author, and Doctorow’s own December 5, 2025 Pluralistic text independently shows the same recurring 'word-guessing program' formulation, supporting the attribution. ([frontporchrepublic.com](https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2026/06/llms-as-the-worst-of-both-worlds-a-review-of-cory-doctorows-the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai/)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 2h ago
replying to Cory Doctorow