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adastra22yesterday at 10:59 AM1 replyview on HN

I have reasons to believe current AIs are conscious & have qualia/experiences, so the moral question is relevant now as well.

EDIT: That statement probably sounds crazy. Let me clarify: I don't have an argument that current AI systems are conscious or specifically sentient. I have heard many reasonable arguments for why they are not. But the thing is, all of these arguments would, with variation, apply to the human brain as well. I think, therefore I am; I am not ready to bite the bullet that consciousness doesn't exist.

I know that I am a sentient being, and I presume that every other human is too. And there is not, as far as I know, a categorial difference between physical brains and electronic systems that is relevant to the question of whether AI systems are conscious. Ergo, I must (until shown otherwise) assume that they are.

[If you really fall down this rabbit hole, you get into areas of panpsychism and everything being conscious, but I digress.]


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danansyesterday at 5:53 PM

> I have reasons to believe current AIs are conscious & have qualia/experiences, so the moral question is relevant now as well.

There are very strong reasons to prioritize alleviating the immiseration of humans as a consequence of AI over mitigating any hypothetical conscious suffering of AI.

We already do that with all kinds of known sentient beings, like the animals we subjugate for our needs.

I would go further and put all biological sentient beings (and also many biological non-sentient beings like plants), and ecosystems ahead of AI in priority of the order in which we worry about their treatment.

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