Training AI is often more costly than supporting human from birth till death. Just sustaining frontier LLM model on necessary hardware costs more than living in first world countries.
What if genetic memory, multigenerational conditioning, life-long patterning and conditioning, experienced in a body, combined with forces and processes not yet detected nor explained, cannot quite fit in a sliver of modeling?
"We must not consider consciousness as all too important because what matters is human flourishing and human rights."
And some of
"Even if we suddenly all agree an LLM is conscious it wouldn't and shouldn't influence us very much"
While acknowledging that some people will change their lives, the way some people like myself won't eat octopus or apes because it is probably more like murdering a sentient creature.
And oh by the way you cannot murder a copyable individual anyway. Did you read Enders Game?
>And oh by the way you cannot murder a copyable individual anyway.
I think for many people the concern is not so much about violating the desire to live that a conscious software entity might (or might not!) have, but about the subjective experience of suffering it might undergo.
I hope the same becomes true of people, and that doesn't mean people stop being sapient.
I think you should reconsider this viewpoint. Suppose that we really can create silicon-based consciousness, in that case your view would result in a huge amount of suffering.
Take some other basis for dismissing digital consciousness, this one is too dangerous.
I argue zero - placing AI below the value of humans no matter the energy input.
The _only_ reason an AI might be worth saving is if it, say, has a cure for all diseases, but then we're not saving it due to its intrinsic worth, we're saving it because we can save many humans. I _would_ consider the trolly problem a legitimate thing in ethics, but not if an AI were tied up on the tracks no matter how expensive it is. It's a thing. It gets run over to save any human.
What would a silicon-based consciousness desire to cause suffering?
If not, then your comment's claim is false.
Anyway, the deeper solution is to acknowledge that all life is sacred, and infinities cannot be compared, and some decisions are impossible to make, and some tragedies cannot be averted, and "prioritization" is a distraction that forces choices when choices are not strictly necessary.
The pure rationalist loses something important.
> infinities cannot be compared
That's either a mathematically illiterate assumption or a very strange philosophical hill to die on.
> some tragedies cannot be averted
Sure. The question is what to do about the ones that can be averted.
> some decisions are impossible to make
> and "prioritization" is a distraction that forces choices when choices are not strictly necessary.
Again, the question is what choices to make when you can (arguably must) make them. Saying they're impossible is just refusing to take responsibility. You either do something, or you don't.
If you believe sanctity of all life is a solution, then I'm curious what you believe the problem is that such a belief solves.
I bet it's circularly defined as justifying the preservation of sacred nonhuman life? I'm not trying to be provocative just curious.