# Age of Empires II’s goats used as AI building blocks to build a neural network — goaty experiment mocks the idea of chatbot consciousness, Microsoft AI researcher’s project makes an absurdist point about AI consciousness

> People seem all too ready to anthropomorphize LLMs and AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Some humans even admit to ‘relationships’ with one or more of the various examples of machine intelligence.

- **Source:** [Tom's Hardware](https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/age-of-empires-iis-goats-used-as-ai-building-blocks-to-build-a-neural-network-goaty-experiment-mocks-the-idea-of-chatbot-consciousness-microsoft-ai-researchers-project-makes-an-absurdist-point-about-ai-consciousness?utm_source=gearopen.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=feed&utm_content=6a3827fbe8976fcb37cdfd4e)
- **Published:** 2026-06-21
- **Category:** AI & Bots
- **Tags:** #microsoft #chatgpt #gemini #claude #ai
- **Canonical:** http://localhost:4321/a/6a3827fbe8976fcb37cdfd4e

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_GearOpen's distilled summary. The full original article is published at Tom's Hardware (source link above); GearOpen does not republish the source's full text._