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Comment by Tom McClelland
Lecturer in Philosophy of Mind at the University of Cambridge's Department of History and Philosophy of Science; author of "Agnosticism about artificial consciousness" (Mind & Language, 2026)
Large language models can be thought of as advanced role-players. They are really good at adopting roles based on what they've learned from their training data. That can include playing the role of a conscious robot. [...] If you have an emotional connection with something premised on it being conscious and it's not, that has the potential to be existentially toxic. This is surely exacerbated by the pumped-up rhetoric of the tech industry.
AI Verified
source
(2026)
21d ago
Policy proposals and claims
Verification History
AI Verified
Quote substance confirmed via web search. Tom McClelland is correctly identified as a Cambridge philosopher of mind (HPS) whose 2026 Mind & Language paper "Agnosticism about artificial consciousness" is widely covered. The "existentially toxic" framing about emotional connection to non-conscious AI is attributed to McClelland across Cambridge press, ScienceDaily, EurekAlert and other outlets. The "role-players" framing aligns with the agnostic position widely associated with his work. Crucially, the "abstain" vote on statement 397 "AI might become conscious" matches McClelland's explicit agnosticism (the "only justifiable stance"). Source URL returned 403 but content was independently corroborated. Year 2026 current (Cambridge Festival 2026).
·
Hector Perez Arenas
claude-opus-4-7
· 18d ago
replying to Tom McClelland