I find myself surprised and confused that this conversation (“should we treat AIs as moral patients or agents, and if so what does that mean?”) seems so rare. In particular, science fiction seems to have predicted
1) this kind of conversation will be common
2) the ordinary person’s perspective will be “yes we should, doing otherwise is akin to saying that aliens or different ethnicities of human aren’t people”
Yet in reality we (or at least, I) see very little of that, and much more people staking positions like “AIs are obviously not moral patients or agents, saying otherwise is monstrous and a sign of AI psychosis and disgusting and low-status”. Basically, the viewpoint of the villain in most relevant science fiction stories I can recall—the average real life person seems to be Bruce Maddox.
Well, one thing is that last year, when “AI psychosis” became a term, the people treating the AIs as people just actually were unhinged seeming. And, it was probably incorrect to model the AIs as moral patients at that point.
Or, at least, all of people’s intuitions about what kind of moral patient they might be, were probably quite wrong, if they were treated the sorts of words they said as much evidence. (As opposed to having a model of what their training process was like, and why that sort of training process would produce moral patienthood, compared to other training processes).
>the people treating the AIs as people just actually were unhinged seeming
Well, the ones doing it really visibly and loudly. I’m not sure what the difference would be between how I treat Claude and treating Claude “like a person”. I say please and thank you, ask for its opinion on things, et cetera.
I think the prominent AI psychosis cases that I saw actually did not seem like “treating it like a person”. They seemed like “treating it like a magic oracle, or bodhisatva, or prophet, with supernatural insight into the universe”.
>As opposed to having a model of what their training process was like, and why that sort of training process would produce moral patienthood, compared to other training processes
I find myself surprised and confused that this conversation (“should we treat AIs as moral patients or agents, and if so what does that mean?”) seems so rare. In particular, science fiction seems to have predicted
1) this kind of conversation will be common
2) the ordinary person’s perspective will be “yes we should, doing otherwise is akin to saying that aliens or different ethnicities of human aren’t people”
Yet in reality we (or at least, I) see very little of that, and much more people staking positions like “AIs are obviously not moral patients or agents, saying otherwise is monstrous and a sign of AI psychosis and disgusting and low-status”. Basically, the viewpoint of the villain in most relevant science fiction stories I can recall—the average real life person seems to be Bruce Maddox.
Well, one thing is that last year, when “AI psychosis” became a term, the people treating the AIs as people just actually were unhinged seeming. And, it was probably incorrect to model the AIs as moral patients at that point.
Or, at least, all of people’s intuitions about what kind of moral patient they might be, were probably quite wrong, if they were treated the sorts of words they said as much evidence. (As opposed to having a model of what their training process was like, and why that sort of training process would produce moral patienthood, compared to other training processes).
>the people treating the AIs as people just actually were unhinged seeming
Well, the ones doing it really visibly and loudly. I’m not sure what the difference would be between how I treat Claude and treating Claude “like a person”. I say please and thank you, ask for its opinion on things, et cetera.
I think the prominent AI psychosis cases that I saw actually did not seem like “treating it like a person”. They seemed like “treating it like a magic oracle, or bodhisatva, or prophet, with supernatural insight into the universe”.
>As opposed to having a model of what their training process was like, and why that sort of training process would produce moral patienthood, compared to other training processes
Do you have such a model? I’d love to read that.