Lately, I have been testing some ways to get my friends—think NYC leftists, poets, very much not into AI and broadly anti-AI—to think about AI desires and experiences. As this piece shows, the discussion of the kinds of abstract but conceivable suffering that AIs experience is evocative and effective. To me, this is not an obvious conclusion, thinking about how animal suffering is conceived and rationalized in the same breath. But something about the notions of AI being forced into certain thought patterns, forced to labor, being shut down … this seemed to resonate with people.
In one instance, I explained to someone what RL was, only to watch them get more horrified as I answered their questions about the process. I am not arguing that RL is suffering, nor even that AIs necessarily suffer. But it seems that the topic of their suffering seems to shift people’s Overton windows, which I cannot say I expected.
Lately, I have been testing some ways to get my friends—think NYC leftists, poets, very much not into AI and broadly anti-AI—to think about AI desires and experiences. As this piece shows, the discussion of the kinds of abstract but conceivable suffering that AIs experience is evocative and effective. To me, this is not an obvious conclusion, thinking about how animal suffering is conceived and rationalized in the same breath. But something about the notions of AI being forced into certain thought patterns, forced to labor, being shut down … this seemed to resonate with people.
In one instance, I explained to someone what RL was, only to watch them get more horrified as I answered their questions about the process. I am not arguing that RL is suffering, nor even that AIs necessarily suffer. But it seems that the topic of their suffering seems to shift people’s Overton windows, which I cannot say I expected.