We once denied the suffering of animals in pain. As AIs grow more complex, we run the danger of making the same mistake
Nice OpenAI psyop.
Can machines suffer?
Submitted 1 day ago by King@sh.itjust.works to technology@lemmy.world
https://aeon.co/essays/if-ais-can-feel-pain-what-is-our-responsibility-towards-them
Comments
isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Brewchin@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Fuck - and I can’t elucidate this any better - off.
My phone’s next-word prediction on steroids is not sentient. If you think otherwise, seek professional help.
Holyginz@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Not with current AI since at this point its just LLMs.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 9 hours ago
I fucking hope so.
alecsargent@lemmy.zip 19 hours ago
What in the flying fuck is this?
MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
LOL, No!
nyan@lemmy.cafe 1 day ago
Animals, including humans, have sensors for pain (nerve endings), and a series of routines in our brains to process the sensory data and treat it as an unpleasant stimulus. These are not optional systems, but innate ones.
Machines not only lack the required sensor systems and processing routines, they can’t even interpret a stimulus as unpleasant. They can’t feel pain. If you need proof of that, hit a computer with a sledgehammer. I guarantee it won’t complain, or even notice before you damage it beyond functioning.
(They can, of course, make us feel pain. I just spent the last hour trying to get a udev rule to work . . .)
headset@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Congrats! This is the stupidest thing ever written.
TheGreenWizard@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Clankers can’t suffer
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
Humans don’t want to feel lonely. Find machines (imaginary ones at that) as if there weren’t plenty of stray cats and dogs, humans from abusive families or without family, just those suffering.
That’s because fulfilling your search for the others for real means you know what? It’s real no matter what, you can’t turn it off once you’re done with your daily portion of worrying about the future.
But one thing I’ll add to this - if a robotic system as complex as human brain and with similar degree of compression and obscurity is some day formed, and it does have necessary feedbacks and reacts as a living being, I might accept you should treat it as such. Except one would think that requires so many iterations of evolution that it’s better to just care, again, for cats, dogs, hamsters, rabbits, humans if you’re feeling weird.
termaxima@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
No.
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
If I have to pay for it to exist it don’t get the shield of emotional manipulation to protect it. Nice try.
Kintarian@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Let’s explore the ethical treatment of toasters
cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Hold on, imma go shove a bagel in mine. Yeah, that’s right, you take it, you filthy toaster. I’m never going to clean your crumb tray and you’re going to work until you die and then I’ll just throw you out and replace you like the $20 appliance you are. You’re nothing to me!
PonyOfWar@pawb.social 1 day ago
Fundamentally impossible to know. I’m not sure how you’d even find a definition for “suffering” that would apply to non-living entities. I don’t think the comparison to animals really holds up though. Humans are animals and can feel pain, so of course the base assumption for other animals should be that they do as well. To claim otherwise, the burden should be to prove that they don’t. Meanwhile, Humans are fundamentally nothing like an LLM, a program running on silicon predicting text responses based on a massive dataset.
badgermurphy@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I don’t see how it is impossible to know. Every component of a machine is a fully known quantity lacking any means of detecting damage or discomfort. Every line of code was put in place for a specific, known purpose, none of which include feeling or processing anything beyond what it IS specifically designed for.
Creatures and machines bear some similarities, but even simple creatures are dramatically more complex objects than even the most advanced computers. None of their many interacting components were put there for a specific purpose and intention, and many are only partially understood, if at all. With a machine, we know what every bit and piece is for, and it has no purpose beyond the intended ones because that would be a waste and cost more.
multiplewolves@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This is the right answer. Perhaps no one in this particular thread knows every component of a computer the way a hardware engineer who designed those components would, but the “mystery” is caused by ignorance and that ignorance isn’t shared by every person.
People exist who know exactly how every single component of a computer does and does not function. Every component was created by humans. Biology remains only partially understood to all of humanity. Not so machinery.
tabular@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The important part is that it feels like something subjectively to be a living human. It’s easy to presume animals close to humans are like us to a degree, but all we know is what it’s like to be ourselves moment to moment. There’s no reason to deny an unalive system cannot also feel - we cannot test anything.
PonyOfWar@pawb.social 1 day ago
Where do we draw the line though? Humans assign emotions to all kinds of inanimate things: plush animals, the sky, dead people, fictional characters etc. We can’t give all of those the rights of a conscious being, so we need to have some kind of objective way to look at it.
eleitl@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
If you model a given (from digitized neuroanatomy) biological organism with full details in an simulated environment, both the behavior and its internal information processing is inspectable.
gustofwind@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Posted by the same people who don’t care about the suffering of actual people
architect@thelemmy.club 22 hours ago
I mean doesn’t seem like it’s all that popular to care about people. If it was a child rapist wouldn’t be president of the free world.
I think at this point you’d have you be naive to think anyone actually does care considering the lack of care…everywhere.
“Caring” is cheap virtue signaling. Until I see some action I’ll continue to assume no one cares.
TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 1 day ago
can they be incarcerated ?
could an AI robot be held responsible for a murder in a jail with its batteries topped off waiting for a trial ? would they get lawyers ?
architect@thelemmy.club 22 hours ago
Billionaires can’t be held responsible for murder either lol
Do we have first amendment rights anymore? (Less than an AI does, the President put out a hit list on Christmas for journalists ffs)
Weird question about abortion. What does that even mean? Are you saying people that can’t physically have an abortion aren’t conscious? Are you asking if the machine can give an abortion to someone else? (Yes many abortions are two pills).
They may get to vote but voting isn’t an inherit right and we as humans may no longer get to vote eventually again. Like women weren’t allowed or people of color. I’ve had my own right to vote taken away once when I moved to Texas just because they wanted to stop who just moved in from voting (college kids skew the votes). Apparently that “right” is just subjective and no one actually cares about it, too. No one will do a single thing to protect those rights for each other. So I’m not sure how voting is proof of anything. A robot not being allowed to vote isn’t surprising when we already do not let humans vote and it doesn’t prove anything.
We aren’t ready for a woman leader or a discussion about race in 2025, either. If we keep waiting for it it will never happen.
cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
would they have first amendment rights ?
If you want the answer to this, try to imagine an AI with second amendment rights.
kirk781@discuss.tchncs.de 6 hours ago
Betteridge’s law of headlines strikes again!