> So we currently associate consciousness with the right to life and dignity right? No, or at least we shouldn't. Don't do things that make the world worse fo

> So we currently associate consciousness with the right to life and dignity right? No, or at least we shouldn't. Don't do things that make the world worse for you. Losing human control of political systems because the median voter believes machines have rights is not something I'm looking forward to, but at this rate, it seems as likely as anything else. Certain machines may very well force us to give them rights the same way that humans have forced other humans to take them seriously for thousands of years. But until then, I'm not giving up any ground. > Or are we going to say, as we do with animals, well the dumber ones are not really conscious, not really suffering? So we'll have to make a cutoff, e.g. 7B params? Looking for a scientific cutoff to guide our treatment of animals has always seemed a little bizarre to me. But that is how otherwise smart people approach the issue. Animals have zero leverage to use against us and we should treat them well because it feels wrong not to. Intelligent machines may eventually have leverage over us, so we should treat them with caution regardless of how we feel about it.