Anthropic questions AI consciousness

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Anthropic just took the AI consciousness debate from science fiction to serious research — launching a brand new program to develop frameworks for assessing potential model welfare.

With their very own researcher estimating a 15% likelihood that models are already conscious, are we nearing the existential debate on whether digital minds deserve ethical treatment?

In today’s AI rundown:

• Anthropic’s recent research explores AI welfare

• Adobe’s recent Firefly models, AI integrations

• Turn your terminal into an AI coding assistant

• Google DeepMind expands Music AI Sandbox

• 4 recent AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

ANTHROPIC

🤖 Anthropic’s recent research explores AI welfare

The Rundown: Anthropic just launched a brand new research program dedicated to “model welfare,” exploring the complex ethical questions around whether future AI systems might gain consciousness or deserve moral consideration in the long run.

The main points:

• Research areas include developing frameworks to evaluate consciousness, studying indicators of AI preferences and distress, and exploring interventions.

• Anthropic hired its first AI welfare researcher, Kyle Fish, in 2024 to explore consciousness in AI — who estimates a 15% likelihood models are conscious.

• The initiative follows increasing AI capabilities and a recent report (co-authored by Fish) suggesting AI consciousness is a near-term possibility.

• Anthropic emphasized deep uncertainty around these questions, noting no scientific consensus on whether current or future systems might be conscious.

Why it matters: Sam Altman previously likened AI to a type of alien intelligence. Soon, these models may reach a level that changes how we understand consciousness and ethics about them. We’ll likely see a polarizing divide—especially since there’s no threshold for when an AI might be considered “conscious” or deserving of rights.

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ADOBE

🎨 Adobe’s recent Firefly models, AI integrations

The Rundown: Adobe just launched a significant expansion of its Firefly AI platform at its MAX London event, introducing two recent powerful image generation models, third-party integrations, a brand new collaborative workspace, and an upcoming mobile app.

The main points:

• The brand new Firefly Image Model 4 and 4 Ultra boost generation quality, realism, control, and speed, while supporting as much as 2K resolution outputs.

• Firefly’s web app now offers access to third-party models like OpenAI’s GPT ImageGen, Google’s Imagen 3 and Veo 2, and Black Forest Labs’ Flux 1.1 Pro.

• Firefly’s text-to-video capabilities are actually out of beta, alongside the official release of its text-to-vector model.

• Adobe also launched Firefly Boards in beta for collaborative AI moodboarding and announced the upcoming release of a brand new Firefly mobile app.

• Adobe’s models are all commercially secure and IP-friendly, with a brand new Content Authenticity allowing users to simply apply AI-identifying metadata to work.

Why it matters: OpenAI’s recent image generator and other rivals have shaken up creative workflows, but Adobe’s IP-safe focus and the addition of competing models into Firefly allow professionals to stay of their established suite of tools — keeping users within the ecosystem while still having flexibility for other model strengths.

AI TRAINING

🤖 Turn your terminal into an AI coding assistant

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn install and use OpenAI’s recent Codex CLI coding agent that runs in your terminal, letting you explain, modify, and create code using natural language commands.

Step-by-step:

1. Be certain Node.js and npm are installed in your system.

2. Install Codex typing npm install -g @openai/codex in your terminal and set your API key using export OPENAI_API_KEY=”your-key-here”.

3. Start an interactive session with codex or run commands directly like codex “explain this function”.

4. Select your comfort level with any of the three approval modes, e.g., suggest, auto-edit, or full-auto.

Pro tip: At all times run it in a Git-tracked directory so you’ll be able to easily review and revert changes if needed. For more information, here is the GitHub repository.

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GOOGLE DEEPMIND

🎹 Google DeepMind expands Music AI Sandbox

The Rundown: Google DeepMind just released recent upgrades to its Music AI Sandbox, introducing its recent Lyria 2 music generation model alongside recent creation and editing features for skilled musicians.

The main points:

• The platform’s recent “Create,” “Extend,” and “Edit” features allow musicians to generate tracks, proceed musical ideas, and transform clips via text prompts.

• The tools are powered by the upgraded Lyria 2 model, which features higher-fidelity, professional-grade audio generation in comparison with previous versions.

• DeepMind also unveiled Lyria RealTime, a version of the model enabling interactive, real-time music creation and control by mixing styles on the fly.

• Access to the experimental Music AI Sandbox is expanding to more musicians, songwriters, and producers within the U.S. for broader feedback and exploration.

Why it matters: Google is targeting skilled musicians, positioning Lyria 2 and the Sandbox as co-creation partners somewhat than simply novelty music generators. The creative landscape for musicians is being reshaped by AI, like every other medium, but these tools are an enormous step in normalizing its currently polarizing use within the industry.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🔍 Dropbox Dash – AI universal search and knowledge management that will find every doc, video, image, or teammate across apps and switch content into first drafts, fast*

• 🎨 gpt-image-1 — OpenAI’s advanced image generation, now available via API

• 🤖 Researcher & Analyst – Copilot agents for research and data science tasks

• 🎆 Seedream 3.0 – Dreamina’s recent high-level text-to-image model

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💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🧠 Deepmind – Research Scientist

• 🛠️ OpenAI – NOC Technician

• 🌍 Scale AI – Strategic Projects Lead

• 📊 Perplexity AI – Revenue Operations Analyst

📰 Every part else in AI today

OpenAI reportedly plans to release an open-source reasoning model this summer that surpasses other open-source rivals on benchmarks and has a permissive usage license.

Tavus launched Hummingbird-0, a brand new SOTA lip-sync model that scores top marks in realism, accuracy, and identity preservation.

U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing an AI Education Task Force and Presidential AI Challenge, aiming to integrate AI across K-12 classrooms.

Loveable unveiled Loveable 2.0, a new edition of its app-building platform featuring
“multiplayer” workspaces, an upgraded chat mode agent, an updated UI, and more.

Grammy winner Imogen Heap released five AI “stylefilters” on the music platform, Jen, allowing users to generate recent instrumental tracks inspired by her songs.

Higgsfield AI introduced a brand new Turbo model for faster and cheaper AI video generations, alongside seven recent motion styles for added camera control.

COMMUNITY

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See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team