7 ms·

> 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

> 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.
        famouswaffles 4y ago
        you're missing the point entirely. that was just an illustration to show how little internals matter in the face of results and actions. "it's just a simulation" is not the shield you think it is. not when models interact with the real world. even your rebuttal is just "well the military won't put gpt in control of that". ok, what about all the myriad of things it can and will be put in control of. humanity is racing already to dump as much control of api's and systems as feasible - taskmatrix, hugginggpt, etc on llms today. that's just going to increase. you'd be surprised how little it takes to deal real world damage for the individual.
  - coldtea 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. It wouldn't matter if it changes their mind. It will change their behavior, lest they go to jail if they discard it practically.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

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.
      - famouswaffles 4y ago
        you're missing the point entirely. that was just an illustration to show how little internals matter in the face of results and actions. "it's just a simulation" is not the shield you think it is. not when models interact with the real world. even your rebuttal is just "well the military won't put gpt in control of that". ok, what about all the myriad of things it can and will be put in control of. humanity is racing already to dump as much control of api's and systems as feasible - taskmatrix, hugginggpt, etc on llms today. that's just going to increase. you'd be surprised how little it takes to deal real world damage for the individual.
- coldtea 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. It wouldn't matter if it changes their mind. It will change their behavior, lest they go to jail if they discard it practically.
deleted 4y ago
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