Artificial intelligence has much to tell us about deception based on recent experiments carried out by scientists at the artificial intelligence company Anthropic.

The researchers grounded their research on new and startling insights into the inner workings of AI based on a distinction well-known in philosophy and neuroscience, but not until now associated with artificial intelligence.

Over the centuries, philosophers have distinguished the capacity to have experiences while not being able to consciously speak of them (referred to as “phenomenal consciousness”) contrasted with another brand of consciousness referred to as “access consciousness” where a thought is consciously accessible and therefore can be reported or spoken about. It’s an arrangement similar to what occurs in the brain where only a small proportion of the networks mediate conscious intentions: Your intended destination when you rise from your chair—access consciousness—played out against the accompanying background processes (the action of the muscles and nerves in your legs) which aren’t consciously experienced or describable.

First, the Anthropic researchers used a novel mathematical technique to visualize what they referred to as the “J-space, a tiny zone for processing intentional internal activity wherein a version of Claude (Claude Sonnet 4.5) holds concepts “in mind”. Most astonishing of all, the J-space wasn’t designed or programmed by Claude’s developers, but instead “emerged on its own during Claude’s training process,” wrote the authors of the background study. The Anthropic scientists learned that monitoring the J-space could provide insight into the inner workings of Claude Sonnet 4.5. “We can find out what Claude is thinking, but not telling us”.

The experiments on........

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