But as a general response, this is why we need to try and develop an accepted theory of consciousness. The problem you raise isn’t specific to digital minds, it’s the same problem when considering non-adult-human consciousness. Maybe most animals aren’t conscious and their wellbeing is irrelevant? Maybe plants are conscious to a certain degree and we should be concerned with their welfare (they have action potentials after all)? Open Philanthropy also has a report on this issue.
For the moment, the best we’ve got for determining whether a system is conscious is:
Subjective reports (do they say they’re conscious?)
Analogous design to things we already consider conscious (i.e. adult human brains)
Anyway, this is just to say there are a great deal of problems that stem from ‘we don’t know which systems are conscious’ and sadly we’re not doing a great job of being close to having a solution for that.
Yep- I was going to have a ‘what we should do’ section and then realised that I had nothing very helpful to say. Thanks for those resources, I’ll check them out.
As per usual, Scott Alexander has a humorous take on this problem here (you need to be an ACX subscriber).
But as a general response, this is why we need to try and develop an accepted theory of consciousness. The problem you raise isn’t specific to digital minds, it’s the same problem when considering non-adult-human consciousness. Maybe most animals aren’t conscious and their wellbeing is irrelevant? Maybe plants are conscious to a certain degree and we should be concerned with their welfare (they have action potentials after all)? Open Philanthropy also has a report on this issue.
For the moment, the best we’ve got for determining whether a system is conscious is:
Subjective reports (do they say they’re conscious?)
Analogous design to things we already consider conscious (i.e. adult human brains)
The field of consciousness science is very aware that this is not a great position to be in. Here’s a paper on how this leads to theories of consciousness being either trivial or non-falsifiable. Here’s a debate between various leading theories of consciousness that is deeply unsatisfying in providing a resolution to these issues.
Anyway, this is just to say there are a great deal of problems that stem from ‘we don’t know which systems are conscious’ and sadly we’re not doing a great job of being close to having a solution for that.
Yep- I was going to have a ‘what we should do’ section and then realised that I had nothing very helpful to say. Thanks for those resources, I’ll check them out.