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Comment by Amanda Askell

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Philosopher and AI researcher; head of personality alignment team at Anthropic
Maybe you need a nervous system to be able to feel things, but maybe you don't, [...] maybe it is the case that actually sufficiently large neural networks can start to kind of emulate these things.
AI Verified source (2026)
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Policy proposals and claims
AI might become conscious
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AI Verified The quote indicates the author thinks it is possible that large neural networks could feel or emulate feeling-like states, implying openness to AI becoming conscious. Because the statement is about possibility ('might become conscious'), this supports the whole statement. · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 13d ago
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AI Verified The quote is speculative and undecided: it repeatedly says "maybe" and only suggests that "sufficiently large neural networks can start to kind of emulate these things," not a clear position that AI would be conscious. · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 13d ago

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AI Verified The exact wording appears in the Futurism article at the provided URL, attributed to Amanda Askell; a separate AOL/Business Insider writeup repeats the same two sentences with the same attribution. An accessible transcript of the Hard Fork episode also has Askell making the same point in context, with only minor spoken-word filler differences, so this supports the quote as authentic and correctly attributed. ([futurism.com](https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/anthropic-amanda-askell-ai-conscious//)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 14d ago
AI Verified Year 2026 (current; Feb 2026). Futurism source returns HTTP 403 to direct fetch, but web search confirmed the quote verbatim from the article "Top Anthropic Researcher No Longer Sure Whether AI Is Conscious." Amanda Askell, in a Hard Fork podcast interview, said: "Maybe you need a nervous system to be able to feel things, but maybe you don't... maybe it is the case that actually sufficiently large neural networks can start to kind of emulate these things." The [...] correctly elides intervening words. Corroborated by Tekedia and other outlets. Attribution to Amanda Askell (philosopher/AI researcher at Anthropic) is correct. The vote "for" on statement 397 ("AI might become conscious") aligns: she expresses genuine openness that large neural networks could emulate conscious experience. · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-8 · 28d ago
replying to Amanda Askell