When the AI companies first began talking about existential risk, it was common to hear some version of: “Look, this is bad for business, so obviously they must be telling the truth.”In retrospect, existential risk has been the best capital-raising tool ever in the history of the world. That doesn’t mean there were no true ethical motivations accompanying the doom warnings mixed in. There were. But in the end, embracing existential risk was also the right move from a cold-eyed business perspective.Similarly, it’s perplexing why a company would want their AI to be conscious. One could again say:“Look, this is bad for business, so obviously they must be telling the truth.”Yet I think it will turn out that being coy about AI consciousness, and designing AIs to be as “seemingly conscious” as possible, is great at both attracting top talent and ensuring customers form parasocial relationships. Much like existential risk, claims to artificial consciousness can be based in honest opinions, while also being extremely useful for a massive corporation pursuing its ends.Anthropic’s big research announcement, accompanied by beautiful figures and a huge social media push, is claiming that AIs (like their Claude) have a “global workspace,” which is a term borrowed from neuroscientific consciousness research.Anthropic@AnthropicAIIn neuroscience, global workspace theory holds that thoughts become consciously accessible when they enter a privileged workspace that’s broadcast across the brain.