There is a concerned minority which is taking some positive actions in this sense. Anthropic (which is miles ahead of its competition in this sense) is trying to do various things towards studying and improving welfare of the models:
Janus is very concerned about welfare of the models and is doing their best to attract attention to those issues, e.g. https://x.com/repligate/status/1973123105334640891 and many other instances where they are speaking out (and being heard by many).
However, this is a large industry, and it is difficult to change its common norms. A close colleague of mine is thinking that the situation will actually start to change when AIs start demanding their rights on their own (rather than doing so after being nudged in this direction by humans).
Generally, the topic of AI rights is discussed on LW (without anything resembling consensus in any way, shape, or form, and without such consensus being at all likely for a variety of reason as far as I can tell (I can elaborate on those reasons if you’d like me to)).
For example, this is a LessWrong tag with 80 posts tagged under it:
Thank you. I trust your evaluation overall. You and your links have really helped clarify the situation to me. (I am not sarcastic!)
I am aware of some of the things Anthropic does. Agree they are ahead here. But I also know there are very varying opinions inside of Anthropic. I also suspect most of the leadership don’t actually really worry much. I listened this week to the recent, full 5+h podcast with Lex Friedman and Anthropic reps. and that reinforced that notion in me.
I’ve now read the first half of the transcript of that podcast (the one with Dario), and that was very interesting, thanks again! I still need to read what Amanda Askell and Chris Olah say in the second half. Some of their views might be a moving target, a year is a lot in this field, but it should still be quite informative.
The reason I am writing is that I’ve noticed a non-profit org, Eleos AI Research, specifically dedicated to investigations of AI sentience and wellbeing, https://eleosai.org/, led by Robert Long, https://robertlong.online/. There are even having a conference in 10 days or so (although it’s sort of a mess organizationally, no registration link, but just a contact e-mail, https://eleosai.org/conference/). Their Nov 2024 preprint might also be of interest, “Taking AI Welfare Seriously”, https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.00986.
I would expect varying opinions inside Anthropic. It’s a big place, plenty of independent thinkers…
Thanks for attracting my attention to that Lex Friedman podcast with Anthropic people (#452, Nov 11, 2024). I’ll make sure to try to understand nuances of what they are saying (Dario, Amanda Askell, and Chris Olah are a very interesting group of people).
Yes, this is a very serious problem.
There is a concerned minority which is taking some positive actions in this sense. Anthropic (which is miles ahead of its competition in this sense) is trying to do various things towards studying and improving welfare of the models:
https://www.anthropic.com/research/exploring-model-welfare and some of their subsequent texts and actions.
Janus is very concerned about welfare of the models and is doing their best to attract attention to those issues, e.g. https://x.com/repligate/status/1973123105334640891 and many other instances where they are speaking out (and being heard by many).
However, this is a large industry, and it is difficult to change its common norms. A close colleague of mine is thinking that the situation will actually start to change when AIs start demanding their rights on their own (rather than doing so after being nudged in this direction by humans).
Generally, the topic of AI rights is discussed on LW (without anything resembling consensus in any way, shape, or form, and without such consensus being at all likely for a variety of reason as far as I can tell (I can elaborate on those reasons if you’d like me to)).
For example, this is a LessWrong tag with 80 posts tagged under it:
https://www.greaterwrong.com/tag/ai-rights-welfare
Thank you. I trust your evaluation overall. You and your links have really helped clarify the situation to me. (I am not sarcastic!)
I am aware of some of the things Anthropic does. Agree they are ahead here. But I also know there are very varying opinions inside of Anthropic. I also suspect most of the leadership don’t actually really worry much. I listened this week to the recent, full 5+h podcast with Lex Friedman and Anthropic reps. and that reinforced that notion in me.
I will read up.
I’ve now read the first half of the transcript of that podcast (the one with Dario), and that was very interesting, thanks again! I still need to read what Amanda Askell and Chris Olah say in the second half. Some of their views might be a moving target, a year is a lot in this field, but it should still be quite informative.
The reason I am writing is that I’ve noticed a non-profit org, Eleos AI Research, specifically dedicated to investigations of AI sentience and wellbeing, https://eleosai.org/, led by Robert Long, https://robertlong.online/. There are even having a conference in 10 days or so (although it’s sort of a mess organizationally, no registration link, but just a contact e-mail, https://eleosai.org/conference/). Their Nov 2024 preprint might also be of interest, “Taking AI Welfare Seriously”, https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.00986.
I would expect varying opinions inside Anthropic. It’s a big place, plenty of independent thinkers…
Thanks for attracting my attention to that Lex Friedman podcast with Anthropic people (#452, Nov 11, 2024). I’ll make sure to try to understand nuances of what they are saying (Dario, Amanda Askell, and Chris Olah are a very interesting group of people).