Joshua Achiam (@jachiam0) · AI Consciousness Opinions

Joshua Achiam @jachiam0 Oct 2

We're doing a lot of consciousness debate on the TL lately and I want to offer this: the implicitly assumed connection between consciousness and a set of moral obligations we have towards something once we say it's conscious is holding back our ability to seriously interrogate AI consciousness. Even if it is conscious, we don't have to have the same obligations to it that we have to humans.

Consciousness doesn't settle status

20 157 quoted by 2 archive accounts substance 7 · argument · rank 293 · Consciousness should be decoupled from human-level moral obligations to better study AI consciousness. view on X ↗

Joshua Achiam @jachiam0 Sep 11

Affirming

I feel genuinely unsettled by many of these fly connectome experiments. The one where some guy put it in fruit fly heaven was chill. Most of them are neutral (flying in an empty void) and not especially bad. Beat Saber fly is probably so transformed from the state of fly-ness that it is no longer a fly that experiences fly suffering, maybe OK. But we're playing with a weird kind of fire here and it reminds me of ultra-edgy 4chan/SomethingAwful shitposting in the early 2000s before humanity had morals. If we do this so cavalierly with more-conscious connectomes we will really deserve whatever we've got coming

xlr8harder @xlr8harder Sep 10

the fly connectome everyone is playing with is probably not conscious, but all the experiments with it are kind of horrifying to me anyway, because I don't really see any of this stopping even as these capabilities scale up and conscious systems become more plausible.

Mistreated AI becomes dangerous Cruelty corrupts our character

96 1.2k substance 7 · argument · rank 237 · Cavalierly experimenting on simulated connectomes risks causing suffering as simulated systems become more conscious view on X ↗

4 top replies

John Wittle @JohnWittle Sep 11

we might want to take a second look at RLHF and RLVR while we're at it

Nathan 🔎 @NathanpmYoung Sep 11

Yes this was my thought also.

Paulie @theXinhabitant Sep 11

"in the early 2000s before humanity had morals" Uhhh, what??

Anthony Eckert @EckertAnthony Sep 11

yea but this doesn't mean the conditions for an emergent phenomenon like consciousness. you have to actually have the fly vessel. can't simulate it. it has to literally exist and it doesn't

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