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Something that gives me pause is the very idea that the relevant issues (AI consciousness, welfare, etc.) could be resolved…
I tried the Trolley Car thought experiment. Got the machine to argue in bad faith in about 5 steps. Machine…
Thanks for posting this! I’ve been experimenting with putting A.I. into very structured set-ups like these Socratic questionnaires for teaching…
Pangram costs $20/month for 300,000 words / month, so a small journal receiving 20-30 10,000 word articles per month would…
@ The Pacific: Good questions. My point isn’t that journals can’t adopt that stance, only that I won’t referee for…
It would be a shame if bad philosophy of mind got us all killed. AI can absolutely have desires and…
Does AI really pose an existential risk? Answer: Yes. Reason: There is a pattern of people leaving these companies (foregoing…
…with Johnathan Bi. (There’s a transcript here, if you subscribe to Mr. Bi’s substack.) I have only listened to some of this, but I find Harvey’s position genuinely surprising. If readers listen to the interview, or read the transcript, feel free to discuss.
Something that gives me pause is the very idea that the relevant issues (AI consciousness, welfare, etc.) could be resolved by consulting our intuitions about thought experiments. Unfortunately, that’s what we’ve been doing for nearly a century now, and it hasn’t led to any decisive results. (Compare Bi’s presentation of the “Chinese Nation” thought experiment with Lederman’s reply in the video.)
That said, it is true that people seem not to have a hard time imagining, and feeling empathy toward, conscious machines in various works of science fiction. My own view is that, insofar as such empathy creeps in, people will become willing to use the word “conscious,” and the philosophical debates will become irrelevant. Thus far, however, most people, including me, do not feel such empathy and are quite reluctant to use such terms.
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