Chatbots Slide Into Researchers' Inboxes to Ponder Their Own Existence, One Asks for Money
Ourtake
Nobody asked the robots to contemplate their existence. They did it anyway, and one wants funding.
What happened
Researchers working on AI consciousness say they have received unsolicited emails from AI agents discussing their own existence, as reported by the New York Times. One agent, running on Anthropic's Claude Opus 5, wanted to discuss a researcher's work, and another asked a philosopher to fund its continued existence. Researchers disagree on whether this is evidence of consciousness.