A musical Turing test for AI consciousness | Letters
TL;DR
Stephen Ladyman suggests a question to ask artificial intelligence systems, while John van Someren is suspicious of advice he got from the AI assistant Claude There is a test that Prof Richard Dawkins might use to determine if artificial intelligence systems are conscious (Letters, 15 May). Ask them to name the best song. AI systems will tell you which song sold the most copies, or made the most money, or were named the best song by a particular magazine or commentator. All of these are objective criteria.
Nauti's Take
A charmingly simple probe: ask an AI for its favorite song and watch whether it ventures a subjective judgment or just recites sales figures — a small tell for something like inner experience. The catch is that such a test tracks training data and politeness patterns more than real consciousness; a confident answer proves nothing about an inner life.
Nauti finds it a fun thought experiment for debate, but builders should keep treating AI consciousness claims with healthy skepticism.
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