Hacker News
points by anonymous908213 22 hours ago | 0 comments
Another day, another Anthropic marketing article trying to deceive people into believing Claude is conscious. Absolutely insane anybody takes this company seriously when they describe "writing notes into an .md file to be re-injected into context later" as ""dreaming"".
[–] 2001zhaozhao 21 hours ago
Dreaming is being used here as an analogy for a post-hoc conflict resolution process for memory (which is part of the theorized purpose of dreaming in the human brain), rather than used literally. I think it's the best word to describe what it does and it is very important to a good memory system, as memory conflicts are one of the most likely things pulling down their performance in the long run. Not really a misnomer, imo, and i don't think they are trying to use the word to suggest that Claude is conscious.
[–] antonvs 21 hours ago
> post-hoc conflict resolution process for memory (which is part of the theorized purpose of dreaming in the human brain)

That’s not accurate. One leading hypothesis is that the experience of dreaming is a side effect of memory processing and consolidation[1]. Using the name of a side effect to describe the process that produces it is misleading, and at best it goes well beyond what’s actually known.

[Edit: and the side effect in question, dreaming, is closely tied to consciousness in humans. Using an “analogy” with those connotations is an unfortunate mistake.]

[1] “The process of memory reactivation and consolidation in the sleeping brain appears to influence conscious experience during sleep, contributing to dream content recalled on awakening.” — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4704085/

[–] antonvs 21 hours ago
It is incredibly unscientific. Superstitious, in fact.

I wouldn’t be particularly surprised if Anthropic were to reconstitute itself as a religion.

[–] freecodeio 11 hours ago
it already is, and all the anthropic-jahedeens are in hackernews
[–] solyin 21 hours ago
Think of the tax benefits!