Live data from Hacker News

The Problem with AI Welfare

substack.com

1–10 of 161 posts

Re: The Problem with AI Welfare

#2
Oh wow. My respect for Anthropic just dropped to zero; I had no idea they were entertaining ideas this stupid.

In full agreement with OP; there is just about no justifiable basis to begin to ascribe consciousness to these things in this way. Can't think of a better use for the word "dehumanizing."

Re: The Problem with AI Welfare

#3
I know everyone has different opinions on LLM safety/ethics and I respect that. However for me this “AI Welfare” indicates that Anthropic is lead by lunatics and that’s more scary. You have to be pretty crazy to worry the code running on GPUs has “feelings”.

Re: The Problem with AI Welfare

#4
Anthropomorphizing LLMs/AI is completely delusional, period. This is a hill I’m willing to die on. No amount of sad puppy eyes, attractive generated faces and other crap will change my mind.

And this is not because I’m a cruel human being who wants to torture everything in my way – quite the opposite. I value life, and anything artificially created that we can copy (no cloning living being is not the same as copying set of bits on a harddrive) is not a living being. And while it deserves some degree of respect, any mentions of “cruel” completely baffle me when we’re talking about a machine.

Re: The Problem with AI Welfare

#5
post #2

Oh wow. My respect for Anthropic just dropped to zero; I had no idea they were entertaining ideas this stupid. In full agreement with OP; there is just about no justifiable basis to begin to ascribe consciousness to these things in this way. Can't think of a better use for the word "dehumanizing."

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 consciousness?

The difference to me seems mostly one of computing mediums.

Re: The Problem with AI Welfare

#8
post #5
post #2

Oh wow. My respect for Anthropic just dropped to zero; I had no idea they were entertaining ideas this stupid. In full agreement with OP; there is just about no justifiable basis to begin to ascribe consciousness to these things in this way. Can't think of a better use for the word "dehumanizing."

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…

Its not absurd to do it to a potential future AI, its absurd to do it to the face of the man in the moon.

Re: The Problem with AI Welfare

#9
This is PR bull* from Anthropic. There are actual people suffering and now they are making of things to suffer that they can pretend to do something about. What next? Ghostbuster discriminated against ghosts? Jurassic Park painted transgender dinosaurs in a negative light?
Post reply on HN