Short version: strongly agree with you about the importance of shifting the conversation from sentience to welfare ranges, but I think that the issue is basically intractable given hedonism at this juncture, as we have no reason to think that any of the states that could be mental states in AI systems are type identical to any of the states in biological organisms. It isn’t intractable given other theories of welfare, though, and depending on your views about what moral weights represent, a “moral weight” for AI systems might still be available. However, we’d need a different methodology for that than the one we outline here.
Short version: strongly agree with you about the importance of shifting the conversation from sentience to welfare ranges, but I think that the issue is basically intractable given hedonism at this juncture, as we have no reason to think that any of the states that could be mental states in AI systems are type identical to any of the states in biological organisms. It isn’t intractable given other theories of welfare, though, and depending on your views about what moral weights represent, a “moral weight” for AI systems might still be available. However, we’d need a different methodology for that than the one we outline here.