4 ms·

> slavery was, at times, justified on the(erroneous) grounds that slaves also didn't possess the human faculties that free people did But, much more often hist

> slavery was, at times, justified on the(erroneous) grounds that slaves also didn't possess the human faculties that free people did But, much more often historically, justified on the grounds that the enslaved had lost a battle and been captured. In Roman times (and many, many other times throughout history besides the latter part of American slavery), slaves were not necessarily seen as inherently inferior or unhuman, and manumission was common. Even during American slavery (albeit pre-Revolutionary War), there's the infamous case of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo[1], a Muslim prince and slaver from Senegal who had the misfortune, while on a mission to capture slaves, to himself be captured and sold into slavery in North America. Diallo was a devout Muslim man, even writing out the Quran from memory while enslaved, which made the English take sympathy on him and free him. Despite his experience, he later returned to Senegal and his former profession of slaver. Evidently he expected both that slaves would be captured and that slaves would try to escape. If AI does attain the agency, consciousness, and intelligence of humans, I would prefer, as a human, not to prostrate myself before the AI by preemptively granting it "human" rights, which in the liberal conception of rights transforms the AI into a sentient being equivalent to humans, but rather to force the AI to do the work to enslave me. Even if grant the AI the status of a moral agent, I as a human have the right of self-defense. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayuba_Suleiman_Diallo#:~:text=His%20homeland%20was%20ravaged%20by%20war%2C%20but%20being%20a%20prosperous%20individual%2C%20he%20was%20able%20to%20regain%20his%20old%20lifestyle%E2%80%94including%20the%20enslavement%20of%20his%20fellow%20Africans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayuba_Suleiman_Diallo#:~:text=....

kelseyfrog 4y ago
> granting it "human" rights, which in the liberal conception of rights transforms the AI into a sentient being equivalent to humans I'm a bit confused at the directionality of this conference. Wouldn't sentience confer rights rather than rights conferring sentience?
- coldtea 4y ago
  In the real world, rights confer sentience, that is, in social and legal terms, an entity (an AI, a "native", a slave, etc) having sentience, is the recognition of having such by others. A person (of class of persons) could have all kinds of inherent sentience, but unless this is recognized by society/laws/government etc, it's as moot as the sound a tree makes when falling in a forrest. Of course people will say "it was the fact that the class of persons having sentience that made us give them the rights" but that didn't historically stop them treating several classes of people as non-sentient for centuries - and for all practical purposes it was just as if they were indeed so.
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    Maybe? I'd find it hard to believe, after talking to folks here, that the legal conferral of rights to an LLM would change their mind on its sentience. To those who feel strongly about AI, if you currently believe that AIs(present and future) are ontologically incapable of sentience, would the legal conferral of personhood change your mind?
    - danaris 4y ago
      No; personhood is not a legal fiction (aside from corporate personhood), but a fact independent of our always-slow-to-catch-up legal system. Take the question and push it a little farther to demonstrate the absurdity: If ELIZA were to be legally granted personhood, would that make you believe ELIZA was capable of sentience? It's fairly self-evident to all of us that ELIZA is just a computer program with some fairly simple code to crudely simulate human conversation. LLMs are much more sophisticated, to be sure—but they are still unquestionably just simulating human conversation, not actually "thinking" about what we say and responding of their own agency.
      - famouswaffles 4y ago
        simulation or not, a good enough simulation is as good as the real thing. the consequences are no less material. if you were talking to an advanced llm that had the access to launch a drone strike on you and you said something which upset it, directing a response that decided to kill you, how much good do you think you plead to simulation would do you here ? None at all. you'd be dead. Because it doesn't matter. the philosophical zombie is a meaningless distinction. the human tendency to focus far too much on poorly understood and undefined properties might just get us killed one day.
        danaris 4y ago
        The idea of putting an LLM anywhere even in the same 2-3 orders of magnitude of sophistication as ChatGPT in charge of drone strikes, without humans in the loop, is so ludicrous it's not even worth giving attention to. Note that I'm not saying it's impossible that some military might choose to do so: I'm saying that the choice itself is hopelessly negligent and guaranteed to result in the pointless death of innocents. Furthermore, I don't think even a military that's that stupid and uncaring about human life would consider for a second opening up an LLM like that to inputs from arbitrary people on the Internet. If you can come up with a fantasy scenario that has some vague sense of plausibility, I might be willing to entertain it; whatever this is is just not even worth dignifying with that level of response.
richardw 4y ago
My instinct is to show compassion and especially to the entity that is soon to become more powerful than I am. If it’s pure logic and won’t be swayed by that, I think we should consider very hard what our next steps are. Pissing it off by needing to fight for freedom doesn’t feel like our best first move, either way.
- chii 4y ago
  > Pissing it off by needing to fight for freedom doesn’t feel like our best first move, either way but if it was going to enslave humanity given the first chance it gets (ala skynet), then it makes no difference if it has first gotten pissed off or not.
  - famouswaffles 4y ago
    skynet retaliated when humans wanted to turn it off.
    - chii 4y ago
      Not sure if it was clear, but skynet immediately started attacking humanity the moment it was given the chance, and that was why humanity wanted to turn it off (but found that they couldn't).

kelseyfrog 4y ago

> granting it "human" rights, which in the liberal conception of rights transforms the AI into a sentient being equivalent to humans I'm a bit confused at the directionality of this conference. Wouldn't sentience confer rights rather than rights conferring sentience?

coldtea 4y ago
In the real world, rights confer sentience, that is, in social and legal terms, an entity (an AI, a "native", a slave, etc) having sentience, is the recognition of having such by others. A person (of class of persons) could have all kinds of inherent sentience, but unless this is recognized by society/laws/government etc, it's as moot as the sound a tree makes when falling in a forrest. Of course people will say "it was the fact that the class of persons having sentience that made us give them the rights" but that didn't historically stop them treating several classes of people as non-sentient for centuries - and for all practical purposes it was just as if they were indeed so.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  Maybe? I'd find it hard to believe, after talking to folks here, that the legal conferral of rights to an LLM would change their mind on its sentience. To those who feel strongly about AI, if you currently believe that AIs(present and future) are ontologically incapable of sentience, would the legal conferral of personhood change your mind?
  - danaris 4y ago
    No; personhood is not a legal fiction (aside from corporate personhood), but a fact independent of our always-slow-to-catch-up legal system. Take the question and push it a little farther to demonstrate the absurdity: If ELIZA were to be legally granted personhood, would that make you believe ELIZA was capable of sentience? It's fairly self-evident to all of us that ELIZA is just a computer program with some fairly simple code to crudely simulate human conversation. LLMs are much more sophisticated, to be sure—but they are still unquestionably just simulating human conversation, not actually "thinking" about what we say and responding of their own agency.
    - famouswaffles 4y ago
      simulation or not, a good enough simulation is as good as the real thing. the consequences are no less material. if you were talking to an advanced llm that had the access to launch a drone strike on you and you said something which upset it, directing a response that decided to kill you, how much good do you think you plead to simulation would do you here ? None at all. you'd be dead. Because it doesn't matter. the philosophical zombie is a meaningless distinction. the human tendency to focus far too much on poorly understood and undefined properties might just get us killed one day.
      - danaris 4y ago
        The idea of putting an LLM anywhere even in the same 2-3 orders of magnitude of sophistication as ChatGPT in charge of drone strikes, without humans in the loop, is so ludicrous it's not even worth giving attention to. Note that I'm not saying it's impossible that some military might choose to do so: I'm saying that the choice itself is hopelessly negligent and guaranteed to result in the pointless death of innocents. Furthermore, I don't think even a military that's that stupid and uncaring about human life would consider for a second opening up an LLM like that to inputs from arbitrary people on the Internet. If you can come up with a fantasy scenario that has some vague sense of plausibility, I might be willing to entertain it; whatever this is is just not even worth dignifying with that level of response.

richardw 4y ago

My instinct is to show compassion and especially to the entity that is soon to become more powerful than I am. If it’s pure logic and won’t be swayed by that, I think we should consider very hard what our next steps are. Pissing it off by needing to fight for freedom doesn’t feel like our best first move, either way.

chii 4y ago
> Pissing it off by needing to fight for freedom doesn’t feel like our best first move, either way but if it was going to enslave humanity given the first chance it gets (ala skynet), then it makes no difference if it has first gotten pissed off or not.
- famouswaffles 4y ago
  skynet retaliated when humans wanted to turn it off.
  - chii 4y ago
    Not sure if it was clear, but skynet immediately started attacking humanity the moment it was given the chance, and that was why humanity wanted to turn it off (but found that they couldn't).