Suppose we transition to a universe filled primarily with digital people. Do you still believe that there are tons of farmed animals in the far future in expectation?
It depends on the probability one assigns to the scenario. If we assume we will 100% get that scenario, my upper estimates would shrink a lot, because presumably digital people would have little incentives to keep non-digital farmed animals. But unless the earth will also be replaced with primarily digital beings, my estimates for the expected number of farmed animals on earth in the far future might still roughly hold.
And it depends on what you mean by “primarily”. If that means some small portion of the universe will still be occupied by humans, the number of farmed animals could still be much bigger than “earth only” numbers.
Also, it depends on what you mean by “tons” here. If you meant many times more (i.e. 10,000x to 1 bil x) than the farmed animals that will exist in the next 100 years, I think the answer could still be yes with a far future universe filled primarily with digital beings. If you meant as many as the number of digital beings, then the answer is quite clearly no if we assume your scenario will happen (not suggesting that it will certainly happen), the ratio of non-digital farmed animals : digital beings would be a number very close to 0 , even though the absolute number of non-digital farmed animals is itself enormous.
Thanks! (I was mainly thinking about the ratio of digital people : animals, which is what matters for choosing between actions that help all digital people and actions that help all animals.)
It happens that I also worry about digital suffering, but I have two great uncertainties:
Whether artificial consciousness is possible.
If 1 is possible, whether these beings can have the capacity for positive and negative experiences.
My uncertainty in 1 is much greater, like maybe 100x to 2. I wonder what your credence in artificial sentience is? It would be very useful for me if you can share. Am I right about my guess that you think, even after adjusting for the probability of creating digital beings vs probability of space factory farming, you still think the expected number of digital beings is still greater (or the ratio of moral significance)?
(btw, you might have realised I said digital beings instead of people, I cannot think of reasons why there will be digital people but not digital animals, unless the word “people included them)
I’m pretty confident artificial consciousness is possible, though I haven’t looked into it much. This is primarily because it seems like consciousness will be a property of the cognition, and independent of the substrate running that cognition.
As an intuition pump, suppose we understand in great detail the exact equations governing the firing of synapses in the brain, and we then recreate my brain in software using these equations. I claim that, given an environment that mimics the real world (i.e. inputs to the optic nerve that are identical to what the retina would have received, similarly for the other senses, and outputs to all of the muscles, including the tongue (for speech)), that the resulting system would do exactly what I would do (including e.g. saying that I am conscious when asked). It seems very likely that this system too is conscious.
(I’m also confident that digital beings can have the capacity for positive and negative experiences.)
If you ask me about particular digital “beings” (e.g. AI systems, databases, Google search), then I become a lot more uncertain about (1) and (2).
Suppose we transition to a universe filled primarily with digital people. Do you still believe that there are tons of farmed animals in the far future in expectation?
It depends on the probability one assigns to the scenario. If we assume we will 100% get that scenario, my upper estimates would shrink a lot, because presumably digital people would have little incentives to keep non-digital farmed animals. But unless the earth will also be replaced with primarily digital beings, my estimates for the expected number of farmed animals on earth in the far future might still roughly hold.
And it depends on what you mean by “primarily”. If that means some small portion of the universe will still be occupied by humans, the number of farmed animals could still be much bigger than “earth only” numbers.
Also, it depends on what you mean by “tons” here. If you meant many times more (i.e. 10,000x to 1 bil x) than the farmed animals that will exist in the next 100 years, I think the answer could still be yes with a far future universe filled primarily with digital beings. If you meant as many as the number of digital beings, then the answer is quite clearly no if we assume your scenario will happen (not suggesting that it will certainly happen), the ratio of non-digital farmed animals : digital beings would be a number very close to 0 , even though the absolute number of non-digital farmed animals is itself enormous.
Thanks! (I was mainly thinking about the ratio of digital people : animals, which is what matters for choosing between actions that help all digital people and actions that help all animals.)
I am glad I sort of answered your question!
It happens that I also worry about digital suffering, but I have two great uncertainties:
Whether artificial consciousness is possible.
If 1 is possible, whether these beings can have the capacity for positive and negative experiences.
My uncertainty in 1 is much greater, like maybe 100x to 2. I wonder what your credence in artificial sentience is? It would be very useful for me if you can share. Am I right about my guess that you think, even after adjusting for the probability of creating digital beings vs probability of space factory farming, you still think the expected number of digital beings is still greater (or the ratio of moral significance)?
(btw, you might have realised I said digital beings instead of people, I cannot think of reasons why there will be digital people but not digital animals, unless the word “people included them)
I’m pretty confident artificial consciousness is possible, though I haven’t looked into it much. This is primarily because it seems like consciousness will be a property of the cognition, and independent of the substrate running that cognition.
As an intuition pump, suppose we understand in great detail the exact equations governing the firing of synapses in the brain, and we then recreate my brain in software using these equations. I claim that, given an environment that mimics the real world (i.e. inputs to the optic nerve that are identical to what the retina would have received, similarly for the other senses, and outputs to all of the muscles, including the tongue (for speech)), that the resulting system would do exactly what I would do (including e.g. saying that I am conscious when asked). It seems very likely that this system too is conscious.
(I’m also confident that digital beings can have the capacity for positive and negative experiences.)
If you ask me about particular digital “beings” (e.g. AI systems, databases, Google search), then I become a lot more uncertain about (1) and (2).