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The Problem with AI Welfare

substack.com

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Re: The Problem with AI Welfare

#91

Post by jononor »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #77
jononor wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual harms being done today are still more pressing than the hypothetical harms of future. And should be prioritized in terms of resources spent.

If it's a valid dichotomy (I don't think it is) then the answer is to stop research on LLMs, and task the researchers with fighting human slavery instead.

I do not think that those researchers are fungible. We could however allocate a few hundred million less to AI research, and more to fighting human exploitation. We could pass stronger worker protection and have the big corporations pay for it - which then they have less money to spent on investments (in AI). Heck we could tax AI investments or usage directly, and spend it on worker rights or other cases of human abuse.

Re: The Problem with AI Welfare

#92

Post by lolomg »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #73
iDont17 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why make AI then if intelligence is electrical activity in a substrate is everywhere. We’re engineering nothing novel at great resource cost and appropriation of agency. Good job we made the models in the textbook “real”? Wasted engineering if it isn’t teaching us anything physics hadn’t already decades ago, then. Why bother with it? Edit: and AGI is impossible… ones light cone does not extend far enough to accuratel…

This is a strange position. >Wasted engineering if it isn’t teaching us anything physics hadn’t already decades ago, then. Why bother with it? Why build cars and locomotives if they don't teach us anything Horses didn't... >and AGI is impossible… ones light cone does not extend far enough to accurately learn; training on simulation is not sufficient to prepare for reality. Any machine we make will eventually get dest…

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Re: The Problem with AI Welfare

#93

Post by indigo945 »

tasuki wrote: post #85

This is possibly the least insightful article I have read on HN. My comment is just a rant against the many misguided points it attempts to make... > Welfare is defined as "the health, happiness, and fortunes of a person or group". What about animals? Isn't their welfare worthy of consideration? > Saying that there is no scientific consensus on the consciousness of current or future AI systems is a stretch. In fact,…

Just to add on to this, because I agree with all points you make: the article argues that "people chatting with Claude a lot and asking if it feels conscious [...] is neither good AI research, nor a deep philosophical investigation", but then builds half its argument on a second-rate sci-fi novel:

    > The sci-fi novel Permutation City captures the absurd endpoint of 
    > this logic when a simulated mind considers its own nature: "And if 
    > the computations behind all this had been performed over millennia, 
    > by people flicking abacus beads, would he have felt exactly the same? 
    > It was outrageous to admit it—but the answer had to be yes." [...] 
    > A theory that demands we accept consciousness emerging from millennia of 
    > flickering abacus beads is not a serious basis for moral consideration; 
    > it's a philosophical fantasy.
Concluding from a random novel the author has read that an argument that actual philosophers working in actual academia on actual problems of Philosophy of Mind is invalid because, to wit, it feels invalid -- I assume that's the "good AI research" and "deep philosophical investigation" the author was looking for, then?

Re: The Problem with AI Welfare

#94

Post by iDont17 »

iDont17 wrote: post #20
gavinray wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is so absurd about the idea of ascribing consciousness to some potential future form of AI? We don't understand consciousness, but we've an idea that it's an emergent phenomena. Given the recent papers about how computationally dense our DNA are, and the computing capacity of our brains, is it so unreasonable to assume that a sufficiently complex program running on non-organic matter could give rise to conscious…

Why make AI then if intelligence is electrical activity in a substrate is everywhere. We’re engineering nothing novel at great resource cost and appropriation of agency. Good job we made the models in the textbook “real”? Wasted engineering if it isn’t teaching us anything physics hadn’t already decades ago, then. Why bother with it? Edit: and AGI is impossible… ones light cone does not extend far enough to accuratel…

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Re: The Problem with AI Welfare

#95

Post by Bigpet »

JustinCS wrote: post #79
Bigpet wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reeks of some navel-gazing self-aggrandizing. I bet not even half the people doing the hand-wringing over how some matrix multiplications might feel are vegan or regularly spare a thought about how their or their companies consumption behavior indirectly leads to real human suffering. It's just so absurd how narrowly their focus on preventing suffering is. I almost can't imagine a world where their concern isn't c…

I'm not highly concerned but I think there is merit in at least contemplating this problem. I believe that it would be better to reduce suffering in animals, but I am not vegan because the weight of my moral concern for animals does not outweigh my other priorities. I believe that it doesn't really matter whether consciousness comes from electronics or cells. If something seems identical to what we consider conscious…

I too think there is merit in exploring to what degree conciousness can be approximated by or observed in computational systems of any kind. Including neural networks. But I just can't get over how fake and manipulative the framing of "AI welfare" or concern over suffering feels.

Re: The Problem with AI Welfare

#96

Post by ajsocjxhdushz »

AlphaAndOmega0 wrote: post #83
ajsocjxhdushz wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The brain, despite some motivated efforts to demonstrate otherwise, runs on the laws of physics. I'm a doctor, even if not a neurosurgeon, and I can reliably tell you that you can modulate conscious experience by physical interventions. The brain runs on physical laws, and said laws can be modeled. It doesn't matter that the substrate is soggy protein rather than silicon. As of today’s knowledge. There is an egregi…

Do you have any actual concrete reasons for thinking that our understanding of consciousness will change? If not, then this is a pointless comment. We need to work with what we know. For example, we know that the Standard Model of physics is incomplete. That doesn't mean that if someone says that it they drop a ball in a vacuum, it'll fall, we should hold out in studied agnosticism because it might go upwards or off…

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Re: The Problem with AI Welfare

#97

Post by bee_rider »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #43
bee_rider wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t.

They're both valid concerns.

There’s a difference between “valid concern” and “any possibility.” LLMs are possibly sentient in the same sense that rocks are, technically we haven’t identified where the sentience comes from. So maybe it is in there.

Personally, I’m coming around to the spiritual belief that rocks might be sentient, but I don’t expect other people to treat their treatment of rocks as a valid problem and also it isn’t obvious what the ethical treatment of a rock is.

Re: The Problem with AI Welfare

#98

Post by jononor »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #89
jononor wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are slave masters today. Billions of animals are livestock - they are born, sustained, and killed by our will - so that we can feed on their flesh, milk and other useful byproduct of their life. There is ample evidence that they have "a form of consciousness". They did not consent to this. Are LLMs worthy of a higher standard? If so, why? Is it hypocritical to give them what we deny animals? In case anyone cares:…

Its not zero sum. We can acknowledge the terrible treatment of animals while also admitting LLMs may need moral standing as well. Whataboutism doesn't help either group here.

They might (or might not). Extraterrestrial beings might also need moral standing. It is ok to spend a bit of thought on that possibility. But it is a bad argument for spending a non-trivial amount of resources that could be used to reduce human or animal suffering. We are not even good at ensuring the rights of people in each country, and frankly downright horrible for denying other humans from across some "border" similar rights.

The current levels of exploitation of humans and animal are however very profitable (to some/many). It is very useful for those that profit from the status quo, that people are instead discussing, worrying and advocating for the rights of a hypothetical future being. Instead of doing something about the injustices that are here today.

Re: The Problem with AI Welfare

#99

Post by bee_rider »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #77
jononor wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual harms being done today are still more pressing than the hypothetical harms of future. And should be prioritized in terms of resources spent.

If it's a valid dichotomy (I don't think it is) then the answer is to stop research on LLMs, and task the researchers with fighting human slavery instead.

It isn’t the primary motivation of capitalists unfortunately, but improving automation could be part of the fight against human slavery and exploitation.
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