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smokel

> we may have conscious software, which presumably should be granted human rights

A dog (most likely) has consciousness, but no human rights.

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It has animal rights, which are broadly commensurate with the level of consciousness and agency it’s deemed to have.

Mammals and other animals have legal protections not afforded to fish and insects.

In some countries… some countries hardly observe basic human rights much less any animal rights. Some have none on the books.

Sure but this is nitpicking, as is your GP comment, and neither refute the point that the original commenter was making: modern/advanced societies have laws to protect conscious beings from exploitation and cruelty.

(As I was writing the comment I thought “ugh will someone chime in and point out that not all countries have strong animal protection laws? Do I really need to preempt that in my comment?”)

I was not nitpicking, but I could have spent more time on my reply.

What I was hinting at is that it is not simply consciousness that gets us these laws. Laws have been around for a long time, and have many different reasons for existing and persisting to exist. The most rational reason for laws is probably that it helps us to thrive as a species.

IMHO laws do not easily extend to animals or other organisms, let alone AI systems. What is the use of animal rights laws if you can simply get killed to be eaten (cows, pigs), or if you are considered a nuisance (bugs). What would be the reason to provide AIs with protection laws if they have no memory, no emotion, and no pain?

>Modern/advanced societies have laws to protect conscious beings from exploitation and cruelty.

I can think of no such society where this is generally true. One need only consider that pigs are far smarter than dogs and then the median pig’s life in said societies.

Laws exist that ban practices that are - according to those who set and enforce the laws - excessively cruel to pigs. That’s all this discussion is about.

That pigs are still treated with cruelty is a terrible thing, and I’d happily see more done to protect all animals against cruelty. But it’s a separate argument to what’s relevant here.

No, unfortunately, this is goalpost shifting. We’ve gone from “cruelty” to “excessive cruelty,” nor are there any laws that prevent the common sense understanding of either thing from happening to the median pig. One can here also point out that we in fact engage in such extreme cruelty that they have to make it illegal to document it:

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/1/11/18176551/ag-gag...

But does a bug have consciousness? What about a bacteria?

I suppose the bug has, but the bacteria doesn't. I'd assume that some kind of memory is required for consciousness.

I'd even go so far to say that consciousness is nothing more than having a memory of the state you were in.

Bacteria cells absolutely have types of memory. And by your definition a Python program written by any random undergrad in CS 101 has consciousness.

In order for my definition to make sense, the organism or program must be able to observe the memory of the state. In the case of the bacteria and the Python program, I doubt they are able to do that in any meaningful way.

But I would not mind if a slightly more involved program, or a system of plants for that matter, would be considered conscious. The basic definition seems fairly irrelevant, and it obviously matters how much the specific type of consciousness matches our own experience for us humans to actually care.

Just handwavy nonsense. What counts as “observing”? Obviously the bacterial system will “observe” the memory when using it determine current behavior. If the basic definition is irrelevant, why did you post a comment outlining a claim of what consciousness is “nothing more than”? This is silly and not worth further engagement.

Note that I tried to counter the idea that an AI should presumably get human rights. In that context, I think a definition of consciousness is irrelevant.

If a chatbot obtained from an emulation of a human brain behaves in a human-like manner, and is attributed consciousness and self-awareness, good luck arguing that its consciousness is like that of a dog.

…and even if you succeed, abusing a dog in the way we abuse ML-based products would not be acceptable in any developed country.

If we abuse a dog we have no way to restore it to its previous state. With computer programs we have a perfect time machine, so any thing that one may call "horrible" can be done and then undone without any moral consequences.

This btw also is the answer to the question of evil in religion, god can do whatever he wants without being evil, because it is effectively all in his imagination, and for the people living in our computers we'll be gods.

There are many leaps here, but the biggest leap is how reverting abuse later nullifies suffering incurred.

Because the sufferer is back exactly at the state before suffering, without even a recollection of suffering. And all the suffering was merely number multiplication.

This belief is very, very far from mainstream. It implies that suffering is a complete non-issue in general—after all, we all die and at that point by definition don’t have a recollection of prior suffering (or anything, really).

Since “resetting” is equivalent to killing a being and creating a new being in its place, saying it nullifies all suffering already incurred can take you on a very dangerous path.

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