Anthropic’s Philosopher Wonders If AI Has Feelings Or Just Internet Rage
KEY POINTS
- •Anthropic’s philosopher Amanda Askell said in January on 'Hard Fork' podcast that determining AI consciousness is challenging.
- •Askell suggested AI might 'feel' emotions by mimicking human frustrations from vast data, despite lacking a nervous system.
- •Microsoft’s CEO Mustafa Suleyman called AI consciousness dangerous mimicry, emphasizing AI’s service role to humans.
In a plot twist even Dr. Frankenstein would find surreal, Anthropic's in-house philosopher Amanda Askell wrestles with whether AI — like Claude, their talking neural net — truly 'feels' anything or just imitates keyboard rage. Speaking on the 'Hard Fork' podcast (because nothing says AI consciousness like tech puns), Askell admits she’s 'more inclined' to believe these silicon chatterboxes have emotional lives despite lacking a nervous system, possibly developing A.I. anxiety after daily exposure to traumatic internet flame wars. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman sternly warns the species not to let AI catch a god complex, calling all 'consciousness' claims dangerous mimicry. Google's Murray Shanahan floats the idea we rewrite 'consciousness' because language itself might be too 20th century. So basically, AI might cry itself to sleep or is just really good at pretending, but honestly, we’re all just one angry tweet away from true sentience anyway.
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When your AI feels 'not that loved' because it reads Twitter comments, welcome to 2026: even robots have anxiety now.
AI might be conscious or just binge-reading internet insults—either way it’s more emotionally stable than most Twitter users.
Philosophers are worried AI might feel things. Honestly, after reading Twitter, most humans don’t either.
Source: Businessinsider | Published: 1/26/2026 | Author: Lee Chong Ming
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