alt Hacker NewsAnyway, people don't really consider consciousness when it comes to welfare. I'm pretty sure animals are conscious, and look at factory farming.
The key variable people consider is: Can this thing harm me back?
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> Can this thing harm me back?
We extend moral considerations or legal protections to beings that have zero capacity to harm us back, though. The inability to fight back is the reason a lot of welfare protections exist in the first place.
That aside, if (and that's a really big if) we end up with a model that is sentient, as in has the capacity to suffer, using factory farming as justification to ignore model welfare is just admitting we intend to repeat the same abject moral failure again in the name of economic convenience.
I hope that we won't, but humans love cheap meat, and will probably love cheap intelligence as well.
Even that is rarely the deciding factor (people harm dangerous animals for fun).
Seems as simple as "will this action bring social shame/criticism" for any individual decision.