Introduction to the Digital Consciousness Model (DCM) Artificially intelligent systems, especially large language models (LLMs) used by almost 50% of the adult US population, have become remarkably sophisticated. They hold conversations, write essays, and seem to understand context in ways that surprise even their creators. This raises a crucial question:...
My paper "AI Welfare Risks" has been accepted for publication at Philosophical Studies! I argue that near-future AI systems may have welfare, that RL and behaviour restrictions could harm them, that this poses a partial tension with AI safety concerns, and I propose three tentative AI welfare policies AI labs...
I have published a paper in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness about how to take into account the interests of non-human animals and digital minds in A(S)I value alignment. For the published version of the paper see (PLEASE CITE THIS VERSION): https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2705078523500042 For a pdf of the final...
Artificially intelligent systems, especially large language models (LLMs) used by almost 50% of the adult US population, have become remarkably sophisticated. They hold conversations, write essays, and seem to understand context in ways that surprise even their creators. This raises a crucial question: Are we creating systems that are conscious?
The Digital Consciousness Model (DCM) is a first attempt to assess the evidence for consciousness in AI systems in a systematic, probabilistic way. It provides a shared framework for comparing different AIs and biological organisms, and for tracking how the evidence changes over time as AI develops. Instead of adopting a single theory of consciousness, it incorporates... (read 1507 more words →)
My paper "AI Welfare Risks" has been accepted for publication at Philosophical Studies!
I argue that near-future AI systems may have welfare, that RL and behaviour restrictions could harm them, that this poses a partial tension with AI safety concerns, and I propose three tentative AI welfare policies AI labs could implement to reduce such welfare risks.
Building on Jeff Sebo, Rob Long, et. al's "Taking AI Welfare Seriously" and Simon Goldstein & Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini's "AI Wellbeing", I show that there is a realistic possibility of near-term AI welfare under all major theories of well-being, including hedonism.
Given that advanced AIs may have desires and we should ascribe some credence to views in which... (read 261 more words →)
I am glad to hear you enjoyed the paper and that our conversation has inspired you to work more on this issue! As I mentioned I now find the worries you lay out in the first paragraph significantly more pressing, thank you for pointing them out!
I do not think this follows, the "consensus" is that sentience is sufficient for moral status. It is not clearly the case that giving some moral consideration to non-human sentient beings would lead to the scenario you describe. Though see: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21550085.2023.2200724
These are great points, thank you!
Remember that what the SCEV does is not directly that which the individuals included in it directly want, but what they would want after an extrapolation/reflection process that converged in the most coherent way possible. This means that almost certainly, the result is not the same as if there were no extrapolation process. If there were no extrapolation process, one real possibility is that something like what you suggest, such as sentient dust mites or ants taking over the utility function would indeed occur. But with extrapolation it is much less clear, that the models of the ants' extrapolated volition may want to uplift the actual ants... (read more)
What I mean by "moral philosophy literature" is the contemporary moral philosophy literature, I should have been more specific, my bad. And in contemporary philosophy, it is universally accepted (though of course, the might exist one philosopher or another who disagrees) that sentience in the sense understood above as the capacity of having positively or negatively valenced phenomenally conscious experiences is sufficient for moral patienthood. If this is the case, then, it is enough to cite a published work or works in which this is evident. This is why I cite Clarke, S., Zohny, H. & Savulescu, J., 2021. You can go see this recently edited book on moral status that this claim is assumed thought and in the book you can find the sources for its justification.
Thank you! I will for sure read these when I have time. And thank you for your comments!
Regarding how to take into account the interests of insects and other animals/digital minds see this passage I have to exclude form publication: [SCEV would apply an equal consideration of interests principle] "However, this does not entail that, for instance, if there is a non-negligible chance that dust mites or future large language models are sentient, the strength of their interests should be weighted the same as the strength of the interests of entities that we have good reasons to believe that it is very likely that they are sentient. The degree of consideration given to the interests or the desires of each being included in the extrapolation base should plausibly be... (read more)
I am arguing that given that
1. (non-human animals deserve moral consideration, and s-risk are bad (I assume this))
We have reasons to believe 2: (we have some pro-tanto reasons to include them in the process of value learning of an artificial superintelligence instead of only including humans).
There are people (whose objections I address in the paper) that accept 1 but do not accept 2. 1 is not justified for the same reasons as 2. 2 is justified for the reasons I present in the paper. 1 is justified by other arguments about animal ethics and the badness of suffering that are intentionally not present in the paper, I cite the places/papers where 1... (read more)
Hi Roger, first, the paper is addressed to those who already do believe that all sentient beings deserve moral consideration and that their suffering is morally undesirable. I do not argue for these points in the paper, since they are already universally accepted in the moral philosophy literature.
This is why, for instance, write the following: "sentience in the sense understood above as the capacity of having positively or negatively valenced phenomenally conscious experiences is widely regarded and accepted as a sufficient condition for moral patienthood (Clarke, S., Zohny, H. & Savulescu, J., 2021)".
Furthermore, it is just empirically not the case that people cannot be convinced "only by ethics and logic": for instance,... (read more)
Yes, and - other points may also be relevant:
(1) Whether there are possible scenarios like these in which the ASI cannot find a way to adequately satisfy all the extrapolated volition of the included beings is not clear. There might not be any such scenarios.
(2) If these scenarios are possible, it is also not clear how likely they are.
(3) There is a subset of s-risks and undesirable outcomes (those coming from cooperation failures between powerful agents) that are a problem to all ambitious value-alignment proposals, including CEV and SCEV.
(4) In part, because of 3, the conclusion of the paper is not that we should implement SCEV if possible all things considered, but rather that we have some strong pro-tanto reasons in favour of doing so. It still might be best not to do so all things considered.
unlike for other humans, we don't have an instrumental reason to include them in the programmed value calculation, and to precommit to doing so, etc. For animals, it's more of a terminal goal.
First, it seems plausible that, we (in fact) do not have instrumental reason to include all humans. As I argue in section 4.2. There are some humans such as: " children, existing people who've never heard about AI or people with severe physical or cognitive disabilities unable to act on and express their own views on the topic" who, if included, would also only be included in because of our terminal goals, because they too matter.
If your view is that... (read 476 more words →)
I have published a paper in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness about how to take into account the interests of non-human animals and digital minds in A(S)I value alignment.
For the published version of the paper see (PLEASE CITE THIS VERSION): https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2705078523500042
For a pdf of the final draft of the paper see: https://philpapers.org/rec/MORTIA-17
Below I have copy-pasted the body of the paper, for those of you who are interested, though please cite the published version at: https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/10.1142/S2705078523500042
Cross-Posted at the EA Forum: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pNHH953sgSConBmzF/taking-into-account-sentient-non-humans-in-ai-ambitious
Abstract: Ambitious value learning proposals to solve the AI alignment problem and avoid catastrophic outcomes from a possible future misaligned artificial superintelligence (such as Coherent Extrapolated Volition [CEV]) have focused on... (read 12522 more words →)