Executive summary: Large language models (LLMs) cannot be considered moral patients in any meaningful sense, as it is impossible to determine their welfare or incorporate it into decision-making.
Key points:
LLMs are best viewed as simulators or “masked shoggoths” that produce faithful simulations of conversations based on training data.
It is impossible to know if the underlying “shoggoth” is experiencing happiness or suffering, as we only interact with the simulated output.
The LLM’s output is always the character, never the actor, making it impossible to gauge the welfare of the underlying intelligence.
Even advanced AI systems that appear to demand rights may simply be echoing expected responses based on their training data.
The ability of LLMs to reason and solve complex problems does not necessarily imply consciousness or the capacity for genuine suffering.
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Executive summary: Large language models (LLMs) cannot be considered moral patients in any meaningful sense, as it is impossible to determine their welfare or incorporate it into decision-making.
Key points:
LLMs are best viewed as simulators or “masked shoggoths” that produce faithful simulations of conversations based on training data.
It is impossible to know if the underlying “shoggoth” is experiencing happiness or suffering, as we only interact with the simulated output.
The LLM’s output is always the character, never the actor, making it impossible to gauge the welfare of the underlying intelligence.
Even advanced AI systems that appear to demand rights may simply be echoing expected responses based on their training data.
The ability of LLMs to reason and solve complex problems does not necessarily imply consciousness or the capacity for genuine suffering.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.