Chad Woodford

In the recent paper claiming to make the case of “moral patienthood” for AI, or “AI welfare,” researchers from NYU and Eleos AI, including @jeffrsebo @rgblong @patrickbutlin, argue that frustration of agency can be grounds for establishing welfare interests, even if everyone agrees that the system is not conscious.

I’m still wrapping my head around this application of preference utilitarianism with echoes of social contract theory from Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Rawls, et al.

It seems to lead to all sorts of strange conclusions. For example, does a broken thermostat unable to set the temperature to its target deserve moral concern and welfare rights? I mean what kinds of convoluted, do-thermostats-dream-of-electric-summer knots are we tying ourselves into here?

I can’t say this often enough: AI systems do not have a point of view, or desires beyond those supplied by their designers and users.

Just catching up with this op-ed by Toni Sims, a researcher at NYU’s Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, the academic organization I connected to Eleos AI and Anthropic in my recent post about the AI consciousness refinery.

Someone needs to study why the @nytimes is so cozy with CMEP, whose express agenda is to advocate for AI sentience and AI welfare. I worry that this further confuses the public about the unlikely emergence of any kind of machine consciousness.

As I argue at length in my forthcoming post about how techno-utopian ideology and popular culture primes us to embrace the possibility of AI consciousness, this kind of performative agnosticism is doing real damage to tech policy and our understanding of ourselves.

Vertical video to horizontal and back is the new baggy jeans to skinny jeans and back. Video is a flat circle.

@Gemini_Notebook I've been using Notebook since it launched and getting a lot out of it. But one thing I never understood is why the default tone of the audio podcast hosts is snarky and jaded. It's especially off-putting when having them summarize something personal, like therapy or coaching sessions. So judgmental!

Inject this straight into my veins! newrepublic.com/post/217594/de…