Jeff Sebo and Robert Long argue for extending moral consideration to AI systems if they have at least a 0.1 % chance of being conscious. By this criterion, moral consideration should also be extended to the 10^18 terrestrial arthropods, 10^20 marine arthropods, and 10^21 nematodes (numbers from Table S1 of Barn-On et al. (2018)), given Rethink Priorities’ (RP’s) estimates for the probability of sentience (see numbers at the bottom of the table below). Even for 10^3 sentient AI systems per human being, I would expect the vast majority of sentient beings to be arthropods and nematodes. There would be 8*10^12 (= 8*10^9*10^3) sentient AI sytems, 8.2*10^16 (= 0.082*10^18) and 8.2*10^18 (= 0.082*10^20) sentient terrestrial and marine arthropods in expectation, assuming a random arthropod is as likely to be sentient as a silkworm, and 6.8*10^19 (= 0.068*10^21) sentient nematodes in expectation. For most sentient beings to be digital in expectation, there would have to be way more than trillions of sentient digital minds.
I guess people are assuming digital sentience is a bigger deal than the naively suggested by the calculations above due to supposing the welfare range of sentient digital minds to be much wider than that of sentient arthropods or nematodes. This illustrates estimating the welfare range conditional on digital consciousness is important.
Jeff Sebo and Robert Long argue for extending moral consideration to AI systems if they have at least a 0.1 % chance of being conscious. By this criterion, moral consideration should also be extended to the 10^18 terrestrial arthropods, 10^20 marine arthropods, and 10^21 nematodes (numbers from Table S1 of Barn-On et al. (2018)), given Rethink Priorities’ (RP’s) estimates for the probability of sentience (see numbers at the bottom of the table below). Even for 10^3 sentient AI systems per human being, I would expect the vast majority of sentient beings to be arthropods and nematodes. There would be 8*10^12 (= 8*10^9*10^3) sentient AI sytems, 8.2*10^16 (= 0.082*10^18) and 8.2*10^18 (= 0.082*10^20) sentient terrestrial and marine arthropods in expectation, assuming a random arthropod is as likely to be sentient as a silkworm, and 6.8*10^19 (= 0.068*10^21) sentient nematodes in expectation. For most sentient beings to be digital in expectation, there would have to be way more than trillions of sentient digital minds.
I guess people are assuming digital sentience is a bigger deal than the naively suggested by the calculations above due to supposing the welfare range of sentient digital minds to be much wider than that of sentient arthropods or nematodes. This illustrates estimating the welfare range conditional on digital consciousness is important.