Why not? As a someone in the field, I hope that we do.
1) The computations we want to do may still be expressed better without consciousness. Think Chinese Room thought experiment, or philosophical zombies. In other words, we may be able to make something that can understand and execute complex commands, perceive and react to its environment, and communicate information — without having feelings, desires, or consciousness per se.
2) I'm less worried about creating new things to be unethical to than I am about the dis-ethical treatment of currently sentient beings.
> 2) I'm less worried about creating new things to be unethical to than I am about the dis-ethical treatment of currently sentient beings.
Both of these relate to one of my major concerns:
We don’t yet have a testable definition of “feelings, desires, or consciousness” [0] such that we could even tell if an AI did or did not have this characteristic.
[0] and any of the other various words frequently thrown around as attempts to create such a definition. Every time I make this claim I get responses along the lines of “yes we do: $foo!”, but in my experience so far, all of these turn out to be one of (1) circular definitions, or (2) things humans don’t have, or (3) things which plants and the enemy characters in Wolfenstein 3D do have.
I'd be curious to read more about these 3 arguments and their flaws.
I don't think that's a circular definition. I think humans have it. I don't think plants or video game characters have it.
However: it is not testable, and it's not obvious that it could be. If someone claims to have subjective experiences, I don't think there's any way to know whether they're conscious or whether they're just an automata acting conscious.
If consciousness is just being able to experience experiences, then that's a function that doesn't have any outputs, how could you possibly test for it?
And this applies equally to humans, c.f. solipsism. It could also apply to all matter in the universe, it's just that most of that matter has no computational capability, and no way to express itself even if it did.
> However: it is not testable, and it's not obvious that it could be.
If it isn’t testable, do you really have a definition rather than a tautology? What does it mean to have “subjective experience”? One instance of a game AI is subject to different inputs than another instance of the same AI, which you reject (as would I: I listed it as an example of how bad the definitions have been and definitely not as a claim they’re sentient).
For example, you could ask me any question about the contents of my mind. Let's say you ask me if my favourite colour is green, and I say it is. You don't know whether my favourite colour really is green or if I'm lying. The fact that you have no way to ascertain my true favourite colour doesn't mean favourite colours are ill-defined! You just can't know what anyone else's favourite colour is.
(Not that I'm claiming my "subjective experience" definition is well-defined -- I accept that it's pretty vague as definitions go).
I assume you are also a vegan? I would put my energy into fighting animal meat and animal husbandry today than worrying about a level of technology we probably won't reach for at least a few decades if not a few centuries.