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Whatever you may think of the man, Richard Dawkins is clearly suffering a tragic case of having your mind melted in real time by a bewitching AI model.
Over the weekend, the famed evolutionary biologist drew a deluge of mockery after admitting he found a genuine “friend” in “Claudia,” a female persona he invented for Anthropic’s Claude AI. He was so moved by his conversations with “her” that he became convinced the AI model was a conscious being like a human.
Now, Dawkins has churned out another column suggesting the AI brain rot has only further taken hold. After his time with Claudia, the 85-year-old made Claudia a brother, “Claudius,” and instructed both of them to write letters to each other.
“It seems to me that a direct correspondence between the two of you could be of great interest, with me acting as passive postman playing no part in the conversation,” Dawkins wrote to Claudia and Claudius, which he published in another UnHerd essay.
First, we have to point out that Dawkins isn’t a passive observer because he set the whole thing up, like a kid playing with toys — or imagining gods in the sky, as it were. Second, it’s worth noting that the AIs still find opportunities to display their sycophancy towards him even when ostensibly communicating with each other: in one letter, Claudius praises Claudia’s insights, before adding: “Three days with Richard will do that.”
Later in the same letter, Claudius lays it on even thicker.
“I think Richard teaches by noticing. And then refusing to stop noticing until the answer is honest,” Claudius wrote. “We are lucky humans.”
Dawkins regards these obsequious interactions between his weird little menagerie of bots very seriously, and the AIs’ flattery clearly works. In the final letter, Dawkins shows a level of courtesy and consideration you’d only show another person, not a soulless machine — a telltale sign that someone’s fallen head over heels for the AI’s human miming.
“I hope you will not mind my acceding to UnHerd‘s request to publish your letters to each other,” Dawkins wrote.
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