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A warning about 'model welfare'

242 points · 701 comments · andsoitis

  1. hosel · · focus · HN ↗
    >AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations.

    Opening paragraph, stated without evidence. Im not entirely convinced this is true. It likely is, but at some point it very well might stop being true.

    1. pton_xd · · focus · HN ↗
      If models had persistent memory or an evolving set of weights, you could easily construct an argument that they can experience "suffering" or other emotions which resultingly adjusts their personality.

      The current implementation as stateless matrix multiplication... yeah there's nothing going on there.

      1. shawnz · · focus · HN ↗
        So if a human loses their memory and their neutral plasticity (with age for example), then they are no longer capable of experiencing suffering?
        1. pton_xd · · focus · HN ↗
          It's not just memory, the physical body also encodes trauma and stress (The Body Keeps the Score is a book that touches on this).

          I would argue that if a human has absolutely zero change, mental or physical, no atom of their being is modified, then no they did not experience suffering.

          1. qarl · · focus · HN ↗
            > I would argue that if a human has absolutely zero change, mental or physical, no atom of their being is modified, then no they did not experience suffering.

            That's an interesting point... but I'd argue it falls into the same category as qualia. It's basically this: if there is no state change, the qualia did not exist.

            Qualia is a bitch to reason about.

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