Host Rachel Feltman talks with Deni Ellis Béchard, Scientific American’s senior tech reporter, about his recent exchange with Claude 4, an artificial intelligence chatbot that seemed to suggest it might be conscious. They unpack what that moment reveals about the state of AI, why it matters and how technology is shifting.

Recommended reading:

Can a Chatbot be Conscious? Inside Anthropic’s Interpretability Research on Claude 4

New Grok 4 Takes on ‘Humanity’s Last Exam’ as the AI Race Heats Up

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Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.

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