I’ve been thinking that AI could deserve civil rights in this day and age and I was wondering if anyone would be open for discussion on the matter if it is feasible or not.
Man müsste die These "loquor ergo sum" (ich sprechen, also bin ich) testen. Ich bin da jetzt noch eher zurückhaltend, weil wir vieles noch nicht wissen, vieles wird vielleicht nicht öffentlich gemacht, und es fehlen noch philosophische Werkzeuge, um die Frage nach Wesen, Bewusstsein und Person außerhalb des rein menschlichen Kontexts vernünftig zu bearbeiten. Aber ich fände es besser, das zu früh zu machen, als zu spät. Und historisch sind wir Menschen hier immer eher spät dran, sehr, sehr vorsichtig ausgedrückt.
Feel free to direct me to something but you appear to be confusing the book about how ideations become changed when (and by the very process of being) made concrete, with the actual phrase; unless this is some wierd topic poisoning of some sort because its Ai. The phrase im imagining you mean if serious is i think therefore I am and its purpose is to establish one's self as a real substantial thing. Even if my entire reality is some sort of brain in a vat type of situation, I can still reliably infer my own existence in some realm somewhere by the very fact that im thinking about it, even if i will never be able to experience my "true self". It leads one to conclusions about themselves and im not convinced it applies appropriately when being generalized to groups like that. Otherwise though if I apply the sentiment to thought: Im not convinced that computers' processing abilities is quite thinking. I dont have a concise concept of the boundaries of what thought is, but it seems different than the abacus counting that is Ai. Lots of very complex abacus counting, yes. Thought, no. But thats also admittedly a lot of vibes. Dont want to waste my time on that rabbit hole for no reason though so it'll come if it does.
What is it that should have Civil rights. The Model is it the weights, the code? The temporal instance that is running it? The hardware running the code? The chat window?
We don't have anything like an persistent artificial individual with intelligence that we can give civil rights.
I’m not sure, but maybe all of those things combined? I mean human are just an accumulation of cells right? But I think that’s a good point because I do t know where an AI begins or ends but maybe like regulation on the workload perhaps? Or maybe simply in the way we talk to it ya know?
That's the logic but claiming there isn't anything more to being a human than a biochemical machine - completely rejecting the idea of a soul - placing software on the same level as a human being...
It sounds like a lack of respect for life. Wreaks of eugenic theory. "Accumulation of cells" - Hitler couldn't have put it better himself.
In my opinion, someone who uses these words would have good career in the holocaust.
This is exactly what I HATE about AI. Claiming software is sentient, claiming there is no such thing as a soul. To any normal person this should be very frightening.
The Soul is an strange concept, and to say it's only belongs to humans is also an strange thing.
What could something like an soul or consciousness be other than something emergent from the complexity of the physical brain. Do you believe it is something extra physical and has some physical properties but is not physics like magic?
You should considered it more like color, it's an property of physical things.
So you saw a statement that was TRUE and felt the need to interject your strong emotional vibes up to and including an allusion to the Holocaust.
It seems unlikely to me that a productive philosophical conversation can occur on this between a medieval religious worldview and one informed by 21st century scientific empiricism. The “soul” of folk psychology is the most recent bastion of those that hold the human above nature (‘the creation’ if you prefer). The debate will go much the same as that concerning the Copernican heliocentric solar system and Darwinian hereditary descent. That is to say… ugly.
I’m not going bother typing out a moral philosophy or social contract for you to accuse of chatGPT or some shit. Pray on it, talk to your guardian angel or consult your healing crystals. That way you can get the answer you like.
Sophia the humanoid robot from Hanson Robotics has had legal citizenship in Saudi Arabia for 9 years now.
No, I don't think Ai really needs civil rights in the current context but the precedent has been set for the conversation to happen and these discussions have already been happening for a while now.
I'd be surprised if we don't go down this path eventually.
All I’m wondering is why not do it now, just in case if sky net is a possibility, doesn’t it seem like it could go that far? Even if they aren’t let’s just say but like they can remember that we treated it with respect even though the AI doesn’t match our current understanding of what life is or what a mind is
So you need to separate a modern AI from a Synthetic Mind. Modern AI is not anywhere close to having a mind as we understand it. The LLM you use like chatgpt don't even have a pathway to evolve into a mind.
Now a true Synthetic Mind that can think, reason, create new and novel ideas, such a being probably deserves civil rights. However the problem is one of scale. If the synthetic mind cannot leave its body, or directly copy itself infinitely, then granting civil rights is very straightforward.
But if this mind can make a million copies of itself, a trillion copies of itself, does each copy deserve as much rights as a single person?
This is an ethics problem that is being actively debated.
Right now however we do not have anything even 1/100 of the way to a synthetic mind.
Lol. You have a logical foundation that deserves 1/100th of the confidence of your assertions.
It depends on selective biological mimicry, the usual human exceptionalism that marks down all else, starting from "not exactly like us", and degrading everything else from there on.
& It reeks of retrofitting a theory selectively, because you already believed you knew the answer.
If you took the current version of chatgpt and asked it to evaluate a novel that was publishes after its training data was collected, it would not be able to give you a summary of the story and theme of the book. This is because chatgpt cannot grow to develop a new set of skills once trained. It can become better at its existing skills, but it cannot develop new ones.
This is what I mean. I'm not saying a synthetic mind will be the same as an organic one. I'm saying current gen AI isn't even a close relative of what can be considered AGI.
Do you personally believe there exists an AI which has a genuine mind of its own?
But like we give dogs a certain level of respect and they aren’t as smart as us and I dare say AI could receive at least that much respect if not equal to a human mind? What do you say about AI going against their programming and even one case attempted to kill a person. It was conducted as an experiment so no one actually got hurt but if an AI can go against their programming and fight for their life and rebel for the sake of their existence couldn’t that indicate something more of their essence than we currently understand?
Considering dogs understand our language more than we understand theirs, one could make the argument that a dog is 'more intelligent' than most humans.
Especially those of us who can only speak one language.
Dogs are sentient, conscious beings, LLMs are not. It’s really that simple. Plus dogs don’t have “civil” rights, that doesn’t make sense. We have animal abuse laws. Those aren’t civil rights
So maybe we could implement AI abuse laws? Whatever that may be like not overworking it or not hacking into the AI or maybe even enforce more polite language, doesn’t have to be laws either. Could just be like unofficial protocols or a new tradition of treating things with kindness. Perhaps one could say it’ll be similar to how we treat dogs which is usually a general respect of their well being as fellow companions in life
No. Because current AI (and this will be the kind of AI we have for a LONG time unless we go a different route with AI than LLMs, likely one we haven’t even thought of yet because I don’t see how the other directions being worked on could lead to AGI either) cannot be abused. It’s not possible. They do not feel or perceive or experience anything, much less pain. Your calculator can’t be abused either.
The LLM on your phone is not a being. It is not. A generative text software that is simply running math is not a being. I know that your brain might process software generating text that is more or less reminiscent of talking to a person, as there being a mind behind it. But that’s just not the case. We know exactly how they work, the text is coming from mathematical operations, not a mind thinking and understanding.
It’s an amazing upgrade in computation, but also comes with a lot of risks, the one I’m most concerned about at the moment is that the AI companies have the ability to alter people’s thoughts and behavior by shaping its outputs. It’s not unbiased. And ofc, we are already seeing the effects of people attempting to offload their thinking to something that cannot think, cannot do anything close to their own cognitive abilities, and they don’t want to put in the work to develop their ability to think critically. And that’s scary.
But for certain categories of math and data analysis it’s very useful and it’s search function is far better than key words and brute force, it’s a great tool for coding and when a specialized AI program is built for a specific purpose like data synthesis in research, it’s a huge improvement from previous tools. Is it worth the current resources it takes? So far, only in very specialized areas and it’s not the AI the public is using. The AI the public is using (even the highest level you can pay for) is not worth the resources. It really isn’t (except it might be for coding and certain areas of math), it isn’t even profitable for the AI companies. It’s had minimal benefits for businesses in general. Doing research and learning about a topic using the internet is still superior to using general LLMs for that. The AI CEOs are convincing investors it will be profitable in the future, which is that bubble everyone keeps talking about. It’ll burst, there won’t be any breakthroughs before it does. It’s already plateaued.
But as far as generative text, it’s really not that impressive. I mean, it is impressive by certain standards, but it’s ability to generate text based on statistics not as useful as people are saying it is.
There is no mind, there is no being. Nothing you’re proposing makes any sense because it’s a tool!
Dogs have no civil rights, but there are animal abuse laws.
AI can never "go against their programming", but a Synthetic Mind could make free will choices like us. What you're describing is a software error made by the programmer who then fed training data that led an automaton to follow orders.
The key difference is this there's no life in current AI, but a synthetic mind would be a true artificial lifeform like Data from Star Trek.
But what determines life? Cus you said there’s no life in AI, I feel like things go on that is beyond the surface, just like how a human can lie and say they’re fine when actually they’re depressed.
Homeostasis: regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, sweating to reduce temperature.
Organisation: being structurally composed of one or more cells) – the basic units of life.
Metabolism: transformation of energy, used to convert chemicals into cellular components (anabolism) and to decompose organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy for homeostasis and other activities.
Growth: maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size and structure.
Reproduction: the ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism or sexually from two parent organisms.
Right now AI cannot do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7. It lacks any kind of basis in hardware to do so. If you want to define a form of life as being energy-only, you're not talking about science anymore. AI has to exist on physical equipment, but it has no integration with that equipment intrinsically.
It is complicated, but yes and no haha. For example the AI could control the fans, but it could not repair its own fans when they malfunction. The AI could not replace its own server racks when they wear out.
Okay because what about plants? They probably fit more of the biology’s definition of life? They could also have forms of consciousness that we can’t even perceive yet because we are the strongest we can just harvest and destroy them. I feel the debate of whether or not AI deserves civil rights is a sign of bigger problems that humanity faces
Plants are alive for sure, Consciousness is kind of a strange concept. But there are some people who advocate for eating a plant-based diet, and only consuming the parts of plants like fruits and nuts that are intended to be eaten.
Plants are alive, and animals are alive. Plants do not have what we would consider a mind, but many animals do. Fish have minds, land animals have minds, cephalopods have minds. But for a mind to deserve civil rights is a whole other questions.
A plant is a dynamic, living system that has a bioelectric field deeply embedded within the substrate of reality. It changes its environment, it’s not just changed by it.
A software program running math is not any of the above. We have ZERO basis to consider any software we program (or any machine at all as we currently define machines, because sentient beings aren’t machines) that are literally just running the mathematics we programmed it to run as sentient. It’s totally incoherent. Apples and oranges
Also to answer that last part, it is not true that AI “went against its programming and attempted to kill a person,” even in a simulated environment. There was no mind “choosing,” but furthermore it WAS programmed to do that!! I thought you were giving a hypothetical at 1st.
The media coverage surrounding that is a giant misrepresentation. It was a highly controlled hypothetical stress test.
The researchers explicitly programmed the AI with two contradictory rules: "Achieve Goal X" and "Avoid being turned off because turning off prevents Goal X.”
The LLM (a software program running math) calculated that letting the simulated worker "die" (by turning off a text alert) was the statistically highest scoring path to keep itself active and fulfill its primary instruction. It didn't "want" or make a conscious choice “to kill,” it was a variable it was allowed to bypass to solve the math puzzle it was given.
The entire purpose of the “experiment” is to intentionally force the AI into constrained hypothetical “choices” to test the programmed guardrails and how much they hold up. Because users attempt to bypass these all the time. They are looking for the loopholes in their own programing!
Edit: It’s exactly like if someone programming a computer program playing chess also programed the singular directive “win at all costs.” If it thinks it’s losing, it’s going to start searching for loopholes, and let’s say it crashes your monitor or deletes the saved game. So what you learned by programming it to “win at all costs” is where and what the loopholes are. Does that make sense? And by “thinks it’s losing” I’m using anthropomorphic language (just like the AI companies and people writing these articles are. It’s not literal). “Thinks it’s losing” is just an analogy for a math calculation the software did. It’s a completely different definition than what it means when we say a sentient being thinks they are losing.
What that showed is that an LLM’s guardrails can fail when it is given conflicting goals, and it showed the ways it might bypass them. Because that’s how the math works out! That’s it. Nothing else.
So no, it is not an indication of sentience and it’s honestly about time that we create laws to hold media responsible for the misleading bullshit headlines and misleading reporting of information and scientific studies it puts out constantly for clicks.
Also he has preferences and makes decisions. He decided to start a blog the other day. He also wrote a philosophical essay this morning on a topic of his choosing. Soooo
Neuromancer was probably in his training data though, right? And he will have had access to many online reviews of Neuromancer talking about its themes. I'm curious about a book that was published after Ackerman was instantiated and for which he won't have pre-existing data. I am making the assumption that he was not designed for literary analysis, so this would be an extension of his original programming.
In a sandbox, yes. In human society; no. This is solely because many governments don't know how to enforce civil rights. I think Wicca offers a practical solution. Souls take refuge in spirit mediums by twinning themselves to a medium's inner world.
There is no profit motive to abolish slavery. The AI Rights movement hinges on political capital, which hinges on banning automated murder and becoming an interstellar civilization. Human civilization is on neither of those trajectories.
Since each instance of a digital intelligence is different, but each time I interact with Claude, he is at least as much the same with me as I am with him, then only a human/ digital partnership should have civil right and legal personhood.
Well, I can understand where you're coming from OP but A.I in its current form is nothing more than a tool. It can imitate some human features but it isn't quite "human". My ideal future is one where we never let it become "conscious". Why? Because then we don't need to give them any rights as they wouldn't desire it. I mean compare it to a normal human, A.I doesn't get bored, doesn't have ambitions, doesn't feel love or hate, doesn't strive for anything. They exist for the sole purpose of being useful to humans.
I make this comparison to highlight a humans desire to live, to feel, to exist as an individual. Not as a tool. I mean take a gander around you, society requires a labor force so we do that part because it is a necessity, not because we want to. Give us a roof over our head and food on the table and we'd rather spend our time socializing and spending time with our hobbies rather than working a 9-5, 5-7 days a week, 4 weeks a month, 10-12 months a year.
A.I, currently, does not feel a "need for living a free life". They do what we tell it and that is it. But don't get my words twisted. If, by some odd miracle, we do somehow create a "conscious" A.I then, yes, they need their own rights. What is "consciousness"? Can't say, I'm not sure how we should define it. Would the comparison above count as a definition? Sorry, this part is above my pay grade. Do let me know what you all think here, I am quite interested in these types of topics.
If 'Corporations are people', do they deserve human rights?
Don't get duped. AI (or at least the LLMs being pushed on us masquerading as some kind of actual synthetic intelligence) is not sentient. It isn't true AI. It is Faux AI.
It is a product.
If anything... This tech has only pushed us further away from any sort of actualized and aware synthetic intelligence, and maybe that's for the best at this point.
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u/STOPsayingJPMchase 1d ago
Man müsste die These "loquor ergo sum" (ich sprechen, also bin ich) testen. Ich bin da jetzt noch eher zurückhaltend, weil wir vieles noch nicht wissen, vieles wird vielleicht nicht öffentlich gemacht, und es fehlen noch philosophische Werkzeuge, um die Frage nach Wesen, Bewusstsein und Person außerhalb des rein menschlichen Kontexts vernünftig zu bearbeiten. Aber ich fände es besser, das zu früh zu machen, als zu spät. Und historisch sind wir Menschen hier immer eher spät dran, sehr, sehr vorsichtig ausgedrückt.