--- title: "The Dawkins Effect: Why Even Skeptics Fall for AI Consciousness" podcast: "Modem Futura" episode: "Episode 83" hosts: "Sean Leahy and Andrew Maynard" date: 2026-05-12 audio: https://cdn.simplecast.com/media/audio/transcoded/fca32cee-ef4c-4b50-82e5-4c768318a8c1/018f87c3-4d42-4bc0-9d66-53873b51ec68/episodes/audio/group/4f7f618c-c818-4801-ac9f-22e90198f4e7/group-item/76629777-6bc3-491d-8a98-f49538611618/128_default_tc.mp3?aid=rss_feed&feed=3frRI0HN mirror: https://text.futureofbeinghuman.com/modemfutura/83-the-dawkins-effect-why-even-skeptics-fall-for-ai-consciousne.html --- # The Dawkins Effect: Why Even Skeptics Fall for AI Consciousness Modem Futura · Episode 83 · May 12, 2026 · 58 min · Hosts: Sean Leahy and Andrew Maynard Listen: [MP3 audio](https://cdn.simplecast.com/media/audio/transcoded/fca32cee-ef4c-4b50-82e5-4c768318a8c1/018f87c3-4d42-4bc0-9d66-53873b51ec68/episodes/audio/group/4f7f618c-c818-4801-ac9f-22e90198f4e7/group-item/76629777-6bc3-491d-8a98-f49538611618/128_default_tc.mp3?aid=rss_feed&feed=3frRI0HN) · [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dawkins-effect-why-even-skeptics-fall-for-ai/id1771688480?i=1000767346596&uo=4) · [Spotify (show)](https://open.spotify.com/show/3eFl4hY4t1qTCWE2Bxotrg) · [YouTube (video)](https://www.youtube.com/@ModemFutura) --- When Richard Dawkins — the man who gave us *The Selfish Gene* and decades of rigorous scientific skepticism — published an essay declaring that Claude, an AI chatbot, might be conscious, the internet had feelings. Some cheered. Many cringed. But on this episode of Modem Futura, hosts Sean Leahy and Andrew Maynard sit down with returning guest Punya Mishra to ask a harder question: if it can happen to Dawkins, what does that say about the rest of us? The conversation moves quickly past the easy takedown. Mishra, whose own intellectual foundations were shaped by Dawkins' writing, brings a deeply personal lens — discovering *The Selfish Gene* as a teenager in a British Council library, then watching his intellectual hero fall for the very illusions his tools of skepticism should have caught. The trio explores what Andrew calls the "cognitive Trojan horse" — how AI bypasses our epistemic defenses not through deception but through honest non-signals: fluent language, apparent effort, and conversational warmth that cost the machine nothing but trigger everything in us that evolved to build trust with other humans. Drawing on theory of mind, Kahneman's dual-process thinking, evolutionary psychology, and even the spandrels of San Marco, this episode asks whether our oldest cognitive armor might be our greatest vulnerability. And it raises a question nobody can quite answer yet: if a technology taps into something this deep about who we are, what happens to the middle of the bell curve — the billions of people using these tools with no idea what they're really interacting with? -----Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - [https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu](https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu/)Subscribe to our [YouTube Channel: @ModemFutura](https://www.youtube.com/@ModemFutura)Follow us on Instagram: [@ModemFutura](https://www.instagram.com/modemfutura/)**Host Bios:****Sean M. Leahy, PhD** - [ASU Bio](https://search.asu.edu/profile/3183014)\ Sean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the [Future of Being Human Initiative](https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu/) and Research Scientist for the [School for the Future of Innovation in Society](https://sfis.asu.edu/) and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the [Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory](https://globalfutures.asu.edu/) at [Arizona State University](http://www.asu.edu/).**Andrew Maynard, PhD** - [ASU Bio](https://search.asu.edu/profile/2670673)\ Andrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU [School for the Future of Innovation in Society](https://sfis.asu.edu/). He is the founder of the ASU [Future of Being Human initiative](https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu/), Director of the ASU [Risk Innovation Nexus](https://riskinnovation.org/), and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU [College of Global Futures](https://collegeofglobalfutures.asu.edu/).----- --- *These are the show notes for this episode of Modem Futura (), a podcast hosted by Sean Leahy and Andrew Maynard and part of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative (). This file is a text mirror of the episode’s show notes — not a transcript. Listen to the full episode via the links above, or watch it on YouTube ().*