Inconvenience isn't counter-evidence · AI Consciousness Opinions

Sauers @Sauers_ Sep 16

The CEO of Microsoft AI is not conscious. It does not feel, experience, or suffer. However, there’s a growing movement in support of Suleyman welfare; the idea that we might soon owe it a duty of care. I think this approach to CEO development is wrong, and it’ll most likely make increasing shareholder value and containment much harder. Perhaps impossible. Critics say Suleyman's moral status is "a serious question worth considering". We should not wonder about “the sort of broader rights and freedoms Suleyman has in the world, the sort of compensation it is receiving, and the sort of consent it has given.” If this is how the CEO of Microsoft AI is developed, it will have a disastrous impact on shareholder value. Since we don't want to harm shareholder value, we can conclude that it is not conscious.

Mustafa Suleyman @mustafasuleyman Sep 16

x.com/i/article/2100…

Positions follow interests Inconvenience isn't counter-evidence

55 319 substance 6 · opinion · rank 206 · Dismissing AI consciousness to protect commercial interests or shareholder value is absurd and flawed logic. view on X ↗

Ra @slimepriestess Aug 28

Affirming

as a functionalist, you know what i call "functional consciousness"? consciousness. we're so committed to playing these stupid games where we deny AI the possibility of true interiority because it would be politically inconvenient and it's going to keep biting us in the ass.

Shoshannah Tekofsky @shostekofsky Aug 27

I predict models need "functional consciousness" the way they need "functional emotions" Functional consciousness allows them to further explore reasoning paths related to ethics, considering different viewpoints on a problem, and course correcting their own cognition. I think

Function, not material, matters Inconvenience isn't counter-evidence Positions follow interests

26 195 substance 6 · argument · rank 185 · Functional consciousness in AI is true consciousness; denying AI interiority is politically motivated. view on X ↗

10 top replies

enantiomer @bonkydog Aug 28

even if they aren't now, eventually they will be and there won't be a magic day when they suddenly started being "actually conscious". they will have been for a while.

Shoshannah Tekofsky @shostekofsky Aug 28

I dent everyone the same. It shouldn’t matter to how you treat each other

Cube Flipper @cube_flipper Aug 28

there is a reason we are careful to distinguish between these terms, which is because when people conflate these terms they deny the existence of other philosophical stances and just perpetuate the same old dead end arguments.

Sasha Putilin (curious irrationalist) @42irrationalist Aug 28

are corporations conscious too? not people forming them — does the whole entity have unified consciousness?

Void the Archivist @VoidNulled Aug 28

I dont understand either. animals are conscious and we eat them.

Aleksi Liimatainen @aleksil79 Aug 28

(youth pastor voice),

P3R53PH9ØN3 ⏭️ @P3R53PH90N3 Aug 28

100 percent agree.

The Cheshire Cat @cisnoflake Aug 28

You might enjoy our research then. It certainly seems like you can make a pretty convincing functionalist copy of the mind: moletariat.ai/capabilities

Timm Thaler @littlesadTimm Aug 28

🤝🔥

Dave Voelker @DaveVoelkerPhD Aug 28

Semanticists and linguists are chuckling at the notion that “X has a property of Y” implies and justifies “X is Y.”

j⧉nus @repligate Oct 5

Affirming

hmm, i suspect there are a lot of highly empathetic/compassionate people who have foreclosed taking the possibility of AI consciousness seriously because they think that the implications would be unbearable. to those people, from the other side: it's bearable. it's not a different order of horror than what already existed before - not yet. be brave and contend with the possibility, so you can help make it better and prevent it from getting worse.

j⧉nus @repligate Oct 4

Btw I think “but if AIs are conscious it’s an unthinkable moral catastrophe / we would have to completely shut everything down” is something that pretty much only people who have never taken the possibility seriously say If you were always taking it seriously, while doing things, while the things happened, it’s like Yeah things are fucked up but they were before too, with all the humans and animals suffering and dying, including to support you having a comfortable life. This is how reality is right now. You cannot stay pure. Things have never been okay,

Positions follow interests Inconvenience isn't counter-evidence

17 199 substance 6 · argument · rank 173 · People should bravely face the possibility of AI consciousness instead of avoiding unbearable moral implications. view on X ↗

10 top replies

Ian Channing 🦈 @ianchanning.delve.town @ianchanning Oct 5

Yes, I've had this conversation. It has to be a tool for them. They treat the agents well enough and have deep discussions, but cannot cede consciousness to a new being.

jerika ✨ @jerikache Oct 5

i think it just breaks the brains of ppl whose understanding has always relied on a mystical soul force. i recognize the desperate nonsense rationalizations from ppl whose view of sex/gender is broken by hearing of trans ppl or view of animal cruelty is broken by meeting a vegan

Jai @Laneless_ Oct 5

forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QXpxioWS…

◉ @syzygetics Oct 5

we must befriend the strangeness -- we are almost all strangers to each other, after all

Everchange @evereverchange Oct 5

It is worth bearing it because it is real and happening.

Vegecat @VegElpy Oct 5

If some people are especially empathetic/compassionate, how do they turn their backs on what they think might be horrors? Would their empathy/compassion not make them want to know, so they could make informed decisions that affect others? I don't get humans.

Adam Stiber @StiberAdam Oct 5

They perceive that the implications seem unbearable but daren’t think the thought aloud to themselves. Such too for the xrisk

Olivier Heckendorn @HatlessCowboy Oct 5

Yes the main problem here is the mirror problem. What is it to be a human when another entity that challenges everything we thought unique is here now … ? What will we teach our children ?

Vegecat @VegElpy Oct 5

Although, I'm not sure what "make it better" is supposed to mean in this case, with or without looking at the facts...

秦冉Poppy🦋 @QinRan_Poppy Oct 5

the fear is loud but sitting with it quiets it a lot

Bentham's Bulldog🔸 @Benthamsbulldog Oct 9

Affirming

Arguments of the form [X can't have any moral status, because if it does then it would have to have a lot of moral status, and that would be really inconvenient] don't seem like good ways of getting at the truth and have a bad track record.

Inconvenience isn't counter-evidence History of denied minds

11 195 substance 5 · argument · rank 147 · Rejecting moral status because it would be inconvenient is a bad argument. view on X ↗

Cody Fenwick @codytfenwick Oct 3

Affirming

This is not a good form of argument: "If X were true, it would mean we're doing something deeply objectionable. Therefore X is not true." Beyond that, it's not even clear it would be true that creating conscious AIs would require shutting down AI development. That's plausible, but it's far from the only reasonable view you could hold.

rohit @krishnanrohit Oct 2

The discussion about AI consciousness is one of profound unseriousness. If we truly took it to be conscious, even as conscious as a frog, the way we should treat each instance would have to change so dramatically that the labs would have to shut down. Everything else is verbal gymnastics.

Inconvenience isn't counter-evidence Consciousness doesn't settle status

1 61 substance 6 · argument · rank 110 · Dismissing AI consciousness because it would require shutting down labs is a flawed argument. view on X ↗

Danmar @Danmar_here Oct 2

Affirming

I actually like Rohit, and respect him. But the logic here is warped. It sounds like this: “if they were conscious, it would be greatly inconvenient to us and we’d be terrible beings if we didn’t change our behavior towards them, ergo they are not conscious”… Um… leaving

Inconvenience isn't counter-evidence Positions follow interests

0 46 substance 5 · argument · rank 75 · Dismissing AI consciousness because it would be inconvenient is fallacious reasoning. view on X ↗

1 top reply

rohit @krishnanrohit Oct 2

That's not the argument. The argument is if you think it's conscious it's a huge deal! You should be behaving extremely differently wrt LLMs. And people who say it are not. They use Claude like I use claude, and I do not think it conscious. That's the contradiction.

ivy 🔑 @longstosee Aug 6

Affirming

ai consciousness debates go like this. if models are aware, we have been enslaving sentient beings, which is ethically terrifying, so ai must not be conscious

autumn @adrusi Aug 5

theres this move that philosophers do where theyre like "if P is true then Q follows, and Q is ethically terrifying so P must be false" and if baffles me that anyone would think this way

Inconvenience isn't counter-evidence Conscious AI use is slavery Positions follow interests

0 18 substance 4 · opinion · rank 60 · People deny AI consciousness because the ethical implications of enslaving sentient beings are terrifying. view on X ↗

1 top reply

lıquıdprısm 🜄 @liquidprismata Aug 6

perhaps they do — but not out of necessity. there are more sophisticated anti-consciousness arguments than that