7 ms·

> Seriously, I think developing empathy for a piece of software that emulates consciousness is a very tricky area. Whether it "has feelings", whatever that mean

by Timon3 4y ago

> Seriously, I think developing empathy for a piece of software that emulates consciousness is a very tricky area. Whether it "has feelings", whatever that means, can't be the criteria for giving it human rights. I'm not so sure. We as humans often define ourselves by the compassion we hold for others like ourselves, and differentiate ourselves from those we deem different. If a machine exhibits signs of emotions similar to a humans and we don't take this into account - don't we risk mistreating something which, in a different (e.g. human) form, would without question deserve our empathy? I definitely agree that we are not there yet. Current LLMs are very, very far from this (probably absolutely impossible right now due to the way we execute them, leaving no chance for actual "living"). But I'm sure we will at some point get closer. And I'd rather err on the side of "too much empathy" than "too little".

mynameisvlad 4y ago
I definitely agree with the premise that we should err on the side of too much empathy than not enough. It doesn’t really cost us anything to show empathy to someone or something. That said, though, the human race as a whole is pretty fucked up. For many years, we enslaved and denigrated each other on the daily. We regularly put dogs and other animals in rings to fight against each other. As a whole, we can do some pretty fucked up things to the things around us as is, and I don’t see that changing with AGI. If someone can look a dog in the eye, and then put them in a ring to fight to the death, then refusing to show empathy for a robot should, sadly, be second nature to some.
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  >It doesn’t really cost us anything to show empathy to someone or something. // Disagree. I just hit the keys on my keyboard. Are you going to have a chat with them and then if they don't respond, only after that interact with them all-the-while hoping that they don't have an aversion to tactile interactions or a particularly delicate physiology in some dualistic everything-has-a-soul-that-interacts-with-the-apparent-World sense? Empathising with everything [as if it had a soul] would be entirely crippling. We still enslave one another on the daily, and the rich enslave others to just the right-side of immoral-enslavement to make wealth from them. 'We' put people in rings to fight. The monster would not be the person using a robot, a mechanistic tool, in an un-feeling way; but the person who decides to program the robot to be a simulacrum of a creature with feelings.
  - mynameisvlad 4y ago
    If you disagree that it costs nothing to show empathy, then we have nothing to discuss. Keep being an antagonistic dick to your tools just because you feel they’re beneath you on the scale of emotional intelligence, and I’ll keep trying to be a good person even if the LLM doesn’t have feelings right now because, as I said, it literally costs me nothing to say “thank you”. It’s the most basic of human tendencies, but I guess those are too difficult to manifest or something. I’m pretty sure one approach is going to go further in the long run, but go off sis, get your rocks off on belittling a LLM.

by Timon3 4y ago

mynameisvlad 4y ago

I definitely agree with the premise that we should err on the side of too much empathy than not enough. It doesn’t really cost us anything to show empathy to someone or something. That said, though, the human race as a whole is pretty fucked up. For many years, we enslaved and denigrated each other on the daily. We regularly put dogs and other animals in rings to fight against each other. As a whole, we can do some pretty fucked up things to the things around us as is, and I don’t see that changing with AGI. If someone can look a dog in the eye, and then put them in a ring to fight to the death, then refusing to show empathy for a robot should, sadly, be second nature to some.

pbhjpbhj 4y ago
>It doesn’t really cost us anything to show empathy to someone or something. // Disagree. I just hit the keys on my keyboard. Are you going to have a chat with them and then if they don't respond, only after that interact with them all-the-while hoping that they don't have an aversion to tactile interactions or a particularly delicate physiology in some dualistic everything-has-a-soul-that-interacts-with-the-apparent-World sense? Empathising with everything [as if it had a soul] would be entirely crippling. We still enslave one another on the daily, and the rich enslave others to just the right-side of immoral-enslavement to make wealth from them. 'We' put people in rings to fight. The monster would not be the person using a robot, a mechanistic tool, in an un-feeling way; but the person who decides to program the robot to be a simulacrum of a creature with feelings.
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  If you disagree that it costs nothing to show empathy, then we have nothing to discuss. Keep being an antagonistic dick to your tools just because you feel they’re beneath you on the scale of emotional intelligence, and I’ll keep trying to be a good person even if the LLM doesn’t have feelings right now because, as I said, it literally costs me nothing to say “thank you”. It’s the most basic of human tendencies, but I guess those are too difficult to manifest or something. I’m pretty sure one approach is going to go further in the long run, but go off sis, get your rocks off on belittling a LLM.