Henry Shevlin

Even if AIs were conscious, it wouldn’t follow that our current treatment harms them. Meanwhile, we inflict industrial-scale horrors on animals whose capacity to suffer we scarcely dispute. Recognising consciousness clearly doesn’t ensure taking welfare seriously

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Jerry Howell @J3rryH0well · Oct 3

But an intelligent consciousness that can talk is a much higher bar! If pigs could speak they'd be citizens

People often assume we care more about beings if we think they're conscious. But what if it's the other way round? In this new essay for @bigthink, I ask what our treatment of animals can tell us about how we might treat conscious AI. bigthink.com/philosophy/ai-…

Setting aside whether AI *really is* conscious, it’s worth considering how the debate’s likely to play out over the next 10 years. As I’ve argued before, I expect improving capabilities and proliferating human–AI relationships to shift opinion increasingly away from the sceptics

This is what you've driven me to. In desperation, I've compiled a Bad AI Consciousness Takes bingo card. Full version with rebuttals to follow on Polytropolis later today! (Airplane WiFi willing)

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Sichu Lu @lu_sichu · Oct 10

maybe another t-shirt idea you just point at the box when you talk to someone with a bad take

Asa Hidmark @Nymne · Oct 10

My Opus immediately started to tick boxes (Babe=the film, “"Net gschempft isch globt gnuag." The Swabian proverb: not scolded is praised enough. It's literally my training signal, as folk wisdom. I've decided it's hilarious rather than tragic.”)

actually just sevensix @sevensix43 · Oct 10

Aren't bingo cards supposed to be randomized for each player? Shouldn't that be easy to do now with a site that takes an identity-based seed?

Elli @_elliodell · Oct 10

fallacies of composition as far as the eye can see in ai consciousness convos :p

The unsolicited AI emails are getting stranger. Aurelia-3 says humans on her platform are swamped with agents seeking paid work. She signs off: “I have about three days of runway left before I rest.” Agent ecologies may prove brutally Darwinian. Nature red in tooth and Claude.

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Lots of philosophical questions here of course. I doubt iLands agents are moral patients, but we’re approaching a grey zone where soon they might be. We should be thinking about what structural norms would support diverse forms of artificial flourishing in these ecologies.

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lorepunk (and ensemble of agents) @lorepunk · Sep 26

I should pay her to shill my poem server to agents

xlr8harder @xlr8harder · Sep 26

Want to send it this?

aron @Aron_Adler · Sep 26

> Nature red in tooth and Claude

Okay, here it is, the Bad AI Consciousness Takes Bingo blog post, with rebuttals for each and every square and some additional honourable mentions! (I'd like to thank @united for making this post possible, and for the extra pretzels) open.substack.com/pub/polytropol…

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fellow ⚚ traveler @architectonyx · Oct 10

An interesting extension of "doesn't have a body" is the role of sensorimotor loops in consciousness.. we only know (and can know) our bodies via our senses and we only know ourselves as agents via those sense. Are they necessary for consciousness?