💡 Another round of Longview Philanthropy’s digital minds request for proposals is open for applications.
A year ago I would have called this niche. Now AI labs publish model welfare research, public discussion of digital sentience is growing, and the field is expanding. 📈
Authoritarians use epistemology in 2 ways:
1) Dogma. You MUST believe X.
2) Total skepticism. Believe nothing. The zone is flooded with shit.
Often both at once.
Because good faith “evidence & reason” threatens authoritarianism. It can’t be tolerated.
#EpistemologyMatters
Looking forward to running a workshop on "Why Worldviews Matter (for all #sentientity)" at the UK Animal Law Conference in Birmingham on Thursday at 11am. Hope to see some of you there!
https://t.co/hHcyaLYywO
@ALAWAnimalLaw#Sentientism
Authoritarians use epistemology in 2 ways:
1) Dogma. You MUST believe X.
2) Total skepticism. Believe nothing. The zone is flooded with shit.
Often both at once.
Because good faith “evidence & reason” threatens authoritarianism. It can’t be tolerated.
#EpistemologyMatters
The Sentientism worldview doesn’t have a stance on AI sentience.
But it does insist we use naturalistic “evidence & reason” epistemology to work it out.
Faith-based dogmas are v.unlikely to match reality.
And if we want to make reality better, we need to understand it well.
The Sentientism worldview doesn’t have a stance on AI sentience.
But it does insist we use naturalistic “evidence & reason” epistemology to work it out.
Faith-based dogmas are v.unlikely to match reality.
And if we want to make reality better, we need to understand it well.
Artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational, and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. #MagnificaHumanitas
@tyler_m_john Given anthropocentrism and other forms of moral exclusion are a root cause of our ongoing metacrisis, I think Sentientism might be a better alignment target than Humanism.
That doesn’t mean we humans should cede control or “hand over the baton” of sentience.
@SigalSamuel
Got 30 seconds to nudge humanity towards "evidence, reason, and compassion for all sentient beings"? Or just want to give me a warm glow and a big smile? Then rate or review the #Sentientism podcast wherever you listen. And share it with a friend or 10 🥰
https://t.co/lsduoT5btv
A skeptical view about AI consciousness is starting to emerge that resembles the skeptical view about animal consciousness that prevailed for much of the 20th century: Presume the entity lacks consciousness, then declare the study of consciousness in the entity beyond the reach of science due to our inability to directly observe feelings and emotions in other minds.
For animals, this was basically a recipe for locking in a presumption of non-consciousness as factory farming was on the rise. We now know that this was too simple, since science has many tools for studying phenomena we lack the ability to directly observe. But by the time the scientific study of animal consciousness picked up, factory farming was globally entrenched.
This is a cautionary tale for AI. If we presume non-consciousness now and then treat AI consciousness as beyond science, we risk repeating the mistake we made with animals. And if we wait until future AI systems are more capable, human-like, and plausibly conscious, we might once again find ourselves dependent on a globally entrenched practice of exploiting them.
As with animals, decisions about whether and how to scale up particular AI use industries should depend on many factors. But evidence regarding AI consciousness should be one of them. The sooner we start collecting serious evidence, including by adapting methods from animal welfare science, the better positioned we will be to build a future that works for everyone.
If you're frustrated with Humanism, there's always the Sentientism worldview's "evidence, reason, and compassion for all sentient beings." 🧠❤️
(The "new humanism" Sigal talks about is moving in this direction too... albeit way too slowly for my taste.)
Anti-humanism on the rise. Species guilt is on the rise. Readers write to me: "I'm disgusted to be a human."
To which I say: That fatalistic retreat into “ugh, we’re the worst” is way too easy. It expects nothing of you. Stay with the goddamn pain.
https://t.co/0NECiHFjzR