Consciousness is one of the deepest mysteries in biology. We still don’t know what processes in the brain make us self-aware, or allow us to experience joy or pain. But one theory is known as “global workspace”. And last month Anthropic’s researchers said they had discovered that Claude, too, has such a workspace. Our briefing this week tells you what to make of that—and the wider debate about AI consciousness.

Resistance to the construction of data centres by organic owners of global workspaces is much in the news. You might expect that to slow the advance of AI. In fact, the war on data centres is “a bit fake”, our Schumpeter column explains.

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