FWIW, I think it’s likely that I would call GPT-4 a moral patient even if I had 1000 years to study the question. But I think that has more to do with its capacity for wishes that can be frustrated. If it has subjective feelings somewhat like happiness & suffering, I expect those feelings to be caused by very different things compared to humans.
Yes, I think that assessing the moral status of AI systems requires asking (a) how likely particular theories of moral standing are to be correct and (b) how likely AI systems are to satisfy the criteria for each theory. I also think that even if we feel confident that, say, sentience is necessary for moral standing and AI systems are non-sentient, we should still extend AI systems at least some moral consideration for their own sakes if we take there to be at least a non-negligible chance that, say, agency is sufficient for moral standing and AI systems are agents. My next book will discuss this issue in more detail.
FWIW, I think it’s likely that I would call GPT-4 a moral patient even if I had 1000 years to study the question. But I think that has more to do with its capacity for wishes that can be frustrated. If it has subjective feelings somewhat like happiness & suffering, I expect those feelings to be caused by very different things compared to humans.
Yes, I think that assessing the moral status of AI systems requires asking (a) how likely particular theories of moral standing are to be correct and (b) how likely AI systems are to satisfy the criteria for each theory. I also think that even if we feel confident that, say, sentience is necessary for moral standing and AI systems are non-sentient, we should still extend AI systems at least some moral consideration for their own sakes if we take there to be at least a non-negligible chance that, say, agency is sufficient for moral standing and AI systems are agents. My next book will discuss this issue in more detail.