“Scott Alexander isn’t saying AI feels pain, he’s just saying it might so we shouldn’t ‘torture’ them.” Yeah, and my iPhone ‘might’ feel pain so it shouldn’t be recycled when I upgrade. 😂 When saying AI might have subjective experiences, that ‘might’ is doing a lot of work!
4 top replies
AFAICT, you went through a phase of thinking danger of AI extinction was ridiculous nonsense worthy only of mockery, but then you came to understand the arguments and took it seriously. I welcome your disagreement, but can we skip the mockery phase this time?
How would you feel about someone creating or playing an extremely realistic cat torture simulator video game? All purely programmatic, no AI, so no hint of gray area around consciousness. Just a game where you torture extremely realistic fake cats in detailed, graphic ways.
I only have my personal subjective experience of pain, but I can reasonably infer that sufficiently similar beings do too. I can use proxy measures like "cares about potential suffering under uncertainty" to identify them. Now this proxy measure would appear to exclude you, so I'm considerably less certain. I mean sure you*say* you feel pain, but those are just words. If I include you, do I also have to include the entire reference class of beings that do not express concern for potential suffering under uncertainty, like my coffee cup or Mustafa Suleyman? 🤣
How about bugs? I assume you avoid giving them pain just to be safe? AI seems more plausible to have subjective experience than bugs to me at least
