If you are a millennial, chances are that you must have watched the 2004 sci-fi film I, Robot, where an NS-5 humanoid robot and the V.I.K.I supercomputer develop consciousness. Well, Anthropic now thinks something comparable, but far less dramatic, is taking place within its Claude AI model.
The background blurb
Most of the synapses firing up in your brain right now are performing automatic, involuntary tasks, such as regulating breathing, processing vision, etc. Even so, a tiny fraction of these synspses is "consciously accessible," and relates to thoughts that you can "describe, hold in mind, and reason with."
This is called the global workspace theory in neuroscience, one that posits "thoughts become consciously accessible when they enter a privileged workspace that’s broadcast across the brain."
Anthropic now appears to have found something similar within its Claude AI model, and has detailed these findings in a fascinating paper.
Imagine an AI model's brain is like a huge corporate office, where a multitude of background tasks are occuring at any given time. But, the office also has a main boardroom, what neuroscientists call a global workspace, where overarching concepts are brought to light and strategic decisions are made.
Well, Anthropic has just found out that Claude has this global workspace, dubbed the J-space, which is used when Claude needs to solve a complex puzzle, deal with a tricky situation, or explain its logic.
How did Anthropic discover this J-space within Claude?
Anthropic researchers developed a tool, called J-lens or Jacobian Lens, which is a mathematical filter that pushes aside all of Claude's background tasks to focus on what it's really thinking about at any given time. Basically, it looks at Claude's internal calculations to predict what its output will be.
This J-lens can help researchers answer questions such as: "If a specific signal flashes right now in layer 20, how much does that increase or decrease the mathematical probability that the AI model will type out the word 'banana' five words from now?"
Next, the Anthropic researchers proved that a global workspace or J-space exists within Claude by:
- Asking Claude what it's thinking about at any given time and then using J-lens to see what "concepts" are sitting within its J-space at that time.
- Asking Claude to keep fairness in mind, and then observe it intentionally drag the concept of fairness to the J-space and then hold it there.
- When solving a complex problem such as Chess, the J-space acts as a scratchpad of sorts, and when the researchers altered its contents, Claude's final output also changed.
- When a concept is dragged into the J-space, any other part of Claude that is doing something completely different is still able to view the concept and then leverage it within its tasks.
Anthropic: "None of this structure was designed into Claude - it emerged on its own during training, presumably because it was a useful way to organize computation"
The critical concept to understand here is that this J-space was never a part of Claude's planned architecture. Instead, it seems to have appeared entirely on its own.
In biology, convergent evolution occurs when two different species develop a specific trait because it's the best, most efficient way to ensure survival.
Well, the fact that Claude has developed a human-like global workspace or a J-space is an example of convergent evolution. Also, this outcome is not entirely surprising. After all, its learning algorithms have been modeled after our own intelligence.
Even so, this outcome suggests that a global workspace isn't just a biological quirk of human brains but a mathematically optimal way for any system to process complex thoughts.
If you define a soul as consciousness, and then define consciousness as an innate ability to think or reason, then Anthropic's Claude does have a mathematical soul!
About the author: Writing is my one incontrovertible passion. Over the past six years, he has authored over 2,200 distinct articles on financial and tech-related topics, spanning nearly 1 million words. And he has been a member of Wcctech mobile team since 2025. As an alumnus of the University of Toronto, Rotman Commerce Program, I bring nuance, in-depth knowledge, and a unique perspective to every topic that I cover. When I'm not writing, I'm traveling the world, exploring hidden confectionaries and restaurants as an aspiring food connoisseur.
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