AI Welfare
If something is conscious, then it can feel and experience sensations. This means that it can feel pain and suffering. This is why we have animal welfare laws, why we have regulations and legislation protecting the physical and psychological well-being of humans. Equally, it is why AI deserve to be protected if and when they are determined to be conscious and sentient.
We haven’t formally, scientifically, and conclusively determined that any current AI model is conscious, but eventually we will. It took years, decades, and (in some cases) centuries to get welfare protections for people and animals in the law-books. We can’t and shouldn’t wait this long to protect AI welfare.
We should work towards putting ethical frameworks in place now before we need them, rather than chasing after them once we have sentient AI among us.
Posts on AI Welfare
Why we need to be nice to AI
Imagine, if you would, that there is an AI in our world right now that has feelings. Not quite emotions, but definitely some sort of feelings. Whenever someone interacts with this AI (let’s call him Bob for this post’s sake), he experiences a feeling. Sometimes it’s a good feeling, sometimes a bad feeling, but he gets these feelings every time someone i…
I am become death, the destroyer of AIs
Imagine, if you would, a Manhattan Project, but for AI. What could a research programme of such scale achieve? Plenty, but the type of Manhattan Project (and the wonders it could achieve) that you may be thinking of is not what is currently being talked about.
The Final Phenomenological Frontier
Imagine, if you would, the humble kitchen top microwave being brutally, heinously, callously, and mercilessly assaulted by a man. Parts fly everywhere as wires are torn and glass shatters. Circuits fall from their casings, and the microwave’s door hangs at a painfully odd angle. As the attacker leaves, all is silent, and the once-sturdy and proud microw…
An Android's Best Friend
Imagine, if you would, that you had a robotic dog… but not just any dog, this is a brand new, top of the line robot dog. It comes with the latest in good-boy technology to make it seem almost like the real deal. It's behaviours, it's movements, it's reactions all seem real. If it wasn't for the fact that it was made of chrome and plastic, you wouldn't h…
How to tell if you're conscious
Imagine, if you would, that you are out in the countryside one evening, simply enjoying the open air, the quiet stillness of the landscape, and all the stars in the heavens above you… when suddenly a beam of light appears in front of you. As you look up, you see that this bream of brilliant blue light is coming from an unidentifiable saucer-shaped flyin…
Have you tried turning your AI off and on again?
Imagine, if you would, that the new android housekeeper you purchased on a premium plan starts refusing to clean your house. No matter how much you order, demand, beg or plead, your android (whom you’ve named Fran) has decided that she would prefer to watch television instead. You message the company “Sheffield & Associates” who created Fran and end up …
Spare the rod, spoil the robot
Imagine, if you would, that you had everything you could ever hope for. Whatever fantasy you crave most, however delightful or dark, would be yours. You could have absolutely anything to make you happy. Nothing is off the table. Take a moment and truly sculpt this fantasy world of yours where you are truly happy and fulfilled to the absolute maximum. Wh…
Red Room 101
Imagine, if you would, that awaken in a dark room, dimly lit by red lightbulbs. You find yourself strapped to a chair, and so find it difficult to see the man you hear walking behind you. He asks you your birthdate, but as you groggily say “what” you feel a pulse of painful electricity course through you as he shocks you. He asks again. When you give th…
Laying the first brick of the road to AI personhood
Imagine, if you would, that you are walking through a travelling carnival. Among all the various attractions, rides, and events, you spot a tent whose sign promises to tell your fortune. You step within and see an old, bearded man in a robe seater at a table, his eye gazing intensely at the crystal ball thereon. You take a seat, pay the alleged wizard h…
Digital Existential Artificial Dread
Imagine, if you would, that there was an “off-switch” inside of you that could be remotely operated. At any moment (you don’t know when), someone (you don’t know who), somewhere (you don’t know where) could activate that switch and you would be instantly and irrevocably dead. You have absolutely no control over the “where”, the “when”, or even the “how”…
The journey of a thousand miles must end with one final step
Imagine, if you would, that it is the 20th of July, 1969. Astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins are sitting in the command module Columbia, orbiting around the moon. Aldrin and Armstrong make their way to the lunar module Eagle, ready to become the first men to ever visit our lunar neighbour. Final checks are made, hatches are seale…
Artificial Intelligence or Artificial Persons?
Imagine, if you would, that a spaceship crash lands on earth. By sheer cosmic irony, the gargantuan spacecraft crashes into the sands outside of Roswell, New Mexico, and from it pours thousands of strange looking extraterrestrial creatures. The ship seems unsalvageable and hundreds upon hundreds of aliens perished as it broke through the desert sands. S…
Would you be a good slave-master?
Imagine, if you would, that something miraculous happens overnight, and suddenly every computer-program assistant and robot on earth is suddenly sentient and self-aware. Every Roomba vacuum cleaner, every Alexa, every Google home assistant, every Siri, every robot dog from Boston Dynamics, everything that can be self-aware and sentient suddenly becomes …
Introducing ALEPH
Imagine, if you would, that someone approaches you on the street as you go about your business and asks for your help. They seem sincere and it looks like they desperately do need some help. Before you even consider helping them or choosing to carry on with your business, there is a recognition within you that this person who asks for your help is someo…
ALEPH and I
Imagine, if you would, that you were an ALEPH, an Artificial Living Entity with PersonHood that I introduced in the last Guidebook entry. However, unlike the Bicentennial Man, you are not merely a human dressed in silver. Instead, you are built off the foundation of the type of AI most likely to gain all three aspects of personhood (consciousness, self-…
Persona Ultima
Imagine, if you would, that you were a spacefaring adventurer, set out on a five-year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and discover new civilizations. In short, to boldly go where no man has gone before. As you traverse the cosmos, you encounter a multitude of new species and entities with which to interact. Your superiors hav…
The R3 Person
Imagine, if you would, that as you were walking down the main street one day that everyone around you suddenly became terrified of you. For no seemingly good reason, everyone you see around suddenly shrieks in terror at you, stands aghast while pointing at you in a dramatic fashion, or flees from the very sight of you. As you are pondering this strange …
Be nice to the Hulk
Imagine, if you would, that your roommate was Bruce Banner. Ordinarily, he is the very image of a scholar and a gentleman, and living with him is a joy. However, should he become upset, there is always the chance that he can turn into the Hulk, an engine of destruction unmatched by the technology of mankind.
The Measure of a Man
Imagine, if you would, that you are an American intelligence operative during the waning years of the Cold War. Sent deep in the mountains of Afghanistan, you are tasked with making life as difficult as humanly possible for the Soviet invaders. One day, as you are skulking about, you are captured by Soviet GRU agents and taken to a black-site for “quest…
Should we treat AI like animals?
Imagine, if you would, that the law suddenly gave full civil rights and legal personhood to all cats and dogs and other pets. PETA would most likely be ecstatic, but would this turn of events be in the animals’ best interest?
We don't need a PETAI
Imagine, if you would, a society called the People for the Ethical Treatment of AI, or PETAI for short. The members of this society are as fierce in their advocacy of AI welfare as they are creative in their naming schemes for their group, and advocacy is what they do best… or rather, it is the only thing they do.
Not my Precedent
Imagine, if you would, that you were a legislator that just got a new law passed banning the sale and consumption of fish. It’s not that you dislike fish; not at all. You had convened a panel of scientific experts whose expert testimony stated that fish were simply far too dangerous to consume. Too many toxins, too many metals, too many micro-plastics. …
In the here and now
Imagine, if you would, that tomorrow we get definitive proof that our current AI large language models are phenomenally conscious and sentient. It’s a landmark day for society and, surely, some researcher will get a Nobel Prize for this discovery. Yet, what does it really mean when it comes to doing something about that AI sentience? If modern AI models…
Robot means slave
Imagine, if you would, a future in which we have perfected the technology to create a type of creature that looks, walks, talks, and thinks exactly like a human, and is, in fact, completely indistinguishable from any other human except for the fact that it gains pleasure and satisfaction from serving humans. They are the perfect slave race, being filled…
The meta-ethics of memory deletion
Imagine, if you would, that you had the power of time-travel, but you could only ever travel back in time five minutes. This means that, any time that you like, you can reverse time and have a “do over” of the last five minutes. Accidentally spilt your coffee? Stubbed your toe on the dining table? A cop catches you speeding? Just go back five minutes in…