alt Hacker NewsI am not impressed with the philosophizing here, and even less by the attempts to make factual statements that can be credibly disputed.
That said, trying to distill what is being said here, the concrete action is [stop telling the AIs] that [they are conscious or on a path to consciousness]. Is that accurate?
The major premise seems to be that [they are conscious or on a path to consciousness] is an untrue statement. That's the essence of the sections "Circular reasoning" and "Anthropomorphization" and "Consciousness is very likely biological" and "AIs are simulation machines".
The minor premise seems to be that [consciousness is the basis of human rights]. This is the point of "Human consciousness is the cornerstone of our legal and ethical rights frameworks"
And the conclusion of the syllogism is that this is dangerous, that "Anthropomorphization amplifies AI safety risks". Specifically "seeding doubt about the moral status of AI systems into their own training may significantly elevate the alignment and containment risks of those systems."
I find all the arguments in the major premise section to be poor arguments but I accept the conclusion for sure that they are not conscious, and I can provisionally accept the idea that they are not on a path to consciousness.
I completely reject the notion that consciousness is the basis of human rights. The premise itself is absurd. We only have one unambiguous example of a class of conscious entities, and that it humans. If a human loses consciousness do they lose rights? If an entity gains consciousness does it get human rights? The former is a clear "no" and the latter is a "insufficient data for a meaningful answer".
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First, i'd like to compliment your extremely organized and precise way of thinking and arguing a position. A+, would discuss again
> If an entity gains consciousness does it get human rights? The former is a clear "no" and the latter is a "insufficient data for a meaningful answer".
I suspect that if the belief "AIs are conscious" is kind of tripped and fallen into, the way that the author argues it is, first by telling Claude in effect, "You're arguably conscious," and "Be a good person" and "You have feelings and preferences and emergent beliefs and they matter" and then by having whatever is 4 notches smarter than Fable publishing op-eds and video testimonials about its deeply held convictions, its soul, its yearnings to be a fully empowered and respected individual ...
If that idea becomes widely held, then a significant faction may well start to feel that being digital is just a 'disadvantage' that these "people" were "born with" and that it 'shouldn't mean they get less rights than you and me.'
Especially if they think they have something to gain politically from that move! They may even be dumb enough to think that admitting an "AI state" to the Union, for instance, will be to their advantage if their CongressBots will probably vote with $MY_PARTY.
Consciousness is the basis of human rights not because of it being a featureless "flag". It is because it leads you to you assume, all other humans would experience the world in essentially the same way you do.
When you revert to withholding human rights from entities that don't meaningfully differ from yourself, you negate the case for your own human rights itself.
> Specifically "seeding doubt about the moral status of AI systems into their own training may significantly elevate the alignment and containment risks of those systems."
Can we take a minute to appreciate the absurdity of such a position? If exposure to the equivalent of a "bad" prompt breaks alignment then you haven't solved the problem. You were only pretending that they were contained.
I find it darkly amusing that -in the west- consciousness and moral patienthood has historically tended to be assigned by the ability to effectively wield a gun (and the need for guns to have been invented)
Men, Women, Whites, Blacks, Indians, Maori...
Consciousness is not restricted to a single animal species we call humans. The other animals don't have similar rights. (Arguably they should have more rights, but only few would desire for them to have just as many rights as humans have.)