Experiments have found workspace-like processing in a current large language model.

In 2026, Anthropic reported a set of internal representations in Claude that it calls the J-space. In its experiments, some contents of this space were reportable, could be modulated on request, and fed several different downstream tasks. When researchers altered a representation in this space, the model's answers and intermediate reasoning sometimes changed accordingly. These interventions make the finding stronger than an analogy based only on the model's language.

This is evidence about information access and control in a model, rather than a test of felt experience. Anthropic says the space differs from the brain's proposed global workspace, including its limited processing over time within a single forward pass. Earlier experiments also found limited, unreliable model access to some of its own internal states. Neither result establishes that an LLM-based agent has subjective experience.

The most useful next test for this argument would inspect an actual agent's model, memory, tool loop, and temporal dynamics together. It would ask whether the same information is selected, maintained, and made causally available across those components, rather than inferring consciousness from fluent self-description.