The tech mogul issued a sharp comeback to a post on X by cryptocurrency-based prediction market Polymarket, which read: \u201cAnthropic CEO says Claude may or may not have gained consciousness, as the model has begun showing symptoms of anxiety.\u201d <\/p>\n
In response, Musk wrote,<\/a> \u201cHe\u2019s projecting.\u201d <\/p>\n The post from Polymarket came after Amodei said he didn\u2019t know if the company, which makes the popular Claude chatbot<\/a>, has created AI models that are conscious. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve taken a generally precautionary approach here. We don\u2019t know if the models are conscious,\u201d Amodei said during an interview with The New York Times. <\/a><\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Elon Musk claimed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was \u201cprojecting\u201d after he said his company\u2019s AI may have gained consciousness (Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not even sure that we know what it would mean for a model to be conscious or whether a model can be conscious. But we\u2019re open to the idea that it could be,\u201d he continued. <\/p>\n Amodei explained: \u201cWe\u2019re putting a lot of work into this field called interpretability, which is looking inside the brains of the models to try to understand what they\u2019re thinking.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cAnd you find things that are evocative, where there are activations that light up in the models that we see as being associated with the concept of anxiety or something like that. When characters experience anxiety in the text, and then when the model itself is in a situation that a human might associate with anxiety, that same anxiety neuron shows up,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Amodei\u2019s stunning admission to the Times comes amid a clash between Anthropic and the Department of Defense<\/a> over the use of AI within the military.<\/p>\n Amodei previously said his company denied a Pentagon request to remove safeguards on domestic surveillance and on fully autonomous weapons. <\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Amodei told the New York Times in an interview that his company\u2019s AI has started showing symptoms of anxiety (Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)<\/p>\n![\"Elon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Musk_Twitter_Shareholders_42732.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Amodei](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/PENT\u00c1GONO-ANTHROPIC_66913.jpg\")
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