One thing that bothers me about the AI welfare debate is that people are advocating for AI systems to have legal rights before we give legal rights to animals, trees, plants, nature, and other -very obviously- conscious entities. We even give fewer legal rights to children at the moment, and yet the legal rights proposed for AI would outpace children’s rights. This seems a very bad conclusion to reach.
On AI safety vs. AI welfare, technical researchers continually misunderstand how the law works. Giving legal rights to AI would result in a conflict of rights with humans. At times, AI rights would overrule human rights. Is this a positive thing? Almost certainly not. The hyper-rationalist EA community framework typically ignores democracy, human rights, and fundamental rights as optional extras rather than what we should be defending at all costs against machines.
Finally, it is really still very unclear if AI will ever have consciousness or whether biological matter is required. This debate seems to jump the gun on something which may only happen in twenty years. Meanwhile, AI is literally killing teenagers today, and this community doesn’t care about AI-chatbot induced suicide because (and I quote a co-efficient grant giver): “It’s not existential enough.” Well it’s certainly existential for the dead teenagers.
Interesting reflections.
One thing that bothers me about the AI welfare debate is that people are advocating for AI systems to have legal rights before we give legal rights to animals, trees, plants, nature, and other -very obviously- conscious entities. We even give fewer legal rights to children at the moment, and yet the legal rights proposed for AI would outpace children’s rights. This seems a very bad conclusion to reach.
On AI safety vs. AI welfare, technical researchers continually misunderstand how the law works. Giving legal rights to AI would result in a conflict of rights with humans. At times, AI rights would overrule human rights. Is this a positive thing? Almost certainly not. The hyper-rationalist EA community framework typically ignores democracy, human rights, and fundamental rights as optional extras rather than what we should be defending at all costs against machines.
Finally, it is really still very unclear if AI will ever have consciousness or whether biological matter is required. This debate seems to jump the gun on something which may only happen in twenty years. Meanwhile, AI is literally killing teenagers today, and this community doesn’t care about AI-chatbot induced suicide because (and I quote a co-efficient grant giver): “It’s not existential enough.” Well it’s certainly existential for the dead teenagers.