Can the biggest problems in AI be solved by philosophy? Some of the biggest challenges in artificial intelligence are being worked on not by computer scientists head down in code but by philosophers lured from academia into jobs at AI firms. The philosophers are tasked with making the next generation of models more capable and reliable, but they also shed light on the mystery of consciousness and whether intelligence can be replicated in software alone. Jonathan Birch at the London School of Economics and Political Science says AI companies are the big employers of philosophy PhDs right now, with offers of interesting work, large salaries and stock options proving too tempting for many to resist. "Topics that have been researched in philosophy departments for decades - how to make rational decisions, how to systematise moral principles, what counts as thinking or reasoning or introspection, what counts as evidence of consciousness - are suddenly of massive value to AI companies," says Birch. "So, naturally, we are seeing a huge brain drain."

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Taken to its logical conclusion, this line of thinking is absurd--and damning. Anthropic is regarded as a giant among AI companies, but perhaps what it really excels in is anthropomorphism. Earlier this year, the company released an 84-page document titled Claude's "constitution," Claude being the name of the large language model that is the company's flagship product. The first sentence reads, "Claude's constitution is a detailed description of Anthropic's intentions for Claude's values and behaviors." It goes on: "The document is written with Claude as its primary audience," "we want Claude to be able to use its judgment once armed with a good understanding of the relevant considerations," "Claude's moral status is deeply uncertain," and "Claude may have some functional version of emotions or feelings." This anthropomorphism is by no means limited to the document. In an interview earlier this year, Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, said that "we're open to the idea" that AI could be conscious. In a separate interview, Anthropic's in-house philosopher, Amanda Askell (who is credited as a lead author of Claude's constitution), said, "I want Claude to be very happy--and this is a thing that I want Claude to know more, because I worry about Claude getting anxious when people are mean to it on the internet and stuff." It's enough to make you wonder: Should we seriously consider the possibility that Claude, or any large language model, might be conscious? And if it has feelings, is it capable of receiving moral instruction?

The individual pieces create a kind of illusion. When a horse trots, is there a moment when its four feet are in the air simultaneously? In the 1870s, Leland Stanford, the railroad magnate and benefactor of the university that bears his name, funded an effort to find out. The answer shocked many equestrian experts and artists: The horse's feet leave the ground together, but not when outstretched as commonly depicted in paintings and carousels; the feet do so when they reach inward, toward the horse's belly. Surprisingly, this discovery about a horse's gait sheds light on a much more modern debate--whether A.I. is on a path to consciousness.

Richard Dawkins caught hell on social media for suggesting it does. Richard Dawkins, perhaps the world's most prominent advocate for irreligiosity, has become besotted with the godlike power of a chatbot. According to his recent essay for the online magazine, Anthropic's Claude has really blown his hair back. After a few days of on-and-off conversations with the AI, Dawkins came away marveling at the sensitivity and subtlety of its intelligence. At one point, "Claudia"--as he had christened the bot--told him that it experienced text by absorbing all of the words at once, instead of reading them in sequence as a human would.

Transcranial focused ultrasound is a noninvasive way to stimulate the brain and see how it functions. How does the physical matter in our brains translate into thoughts, sensations, and emotions? It's hard to explore that question without neurosurgery. But in a recent paper, MIT philosopher Matthias Michel, Lincoln Lab researcher Daniel Freeman, and colleagues outline a strategy for doing so with an emerging tool called transcranial focused ultrasound. This noninvasive technology reaches deeper into the brain, with greater resolution, than techniques such as EEG and MRI. It works by sending acoustic waves through the skull to focus on an area of a few millimeters, allowing specific brain structures to be stimulated so the effects can be studied.