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Comment by FullMtlAlcoholc | Hacker News Reader

> But we don't do the same thing for things which have full dependence, fetuses for example

I dont think a fetus is exempt totally because of its complete dependence. Its because a fetus, while a human being, is not a person.

But Im less interested in the legal reasoning and more interested in the moral one. If the AI is sufficiently advanced enough that it develops a synthetic consciousness and can experience suffering, does that make it ok that it suffers for entertainment?

If there were a god responsible for the creation of the universe, many people find the notion of a god that allows suffering without good reason distasteful (often, this is the 1st step tiwards atheism for those raised in religious environments) despite. Said god's omnipotence is no justification for them

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Bits cannot suffer, they simply simulate suffering. Just because your tamagatchi is a really good tamagatchi that can simulate a human brain doesn't make it immoral to torture it - it's still just a simulation. It takes biological matter to suffer.

Many animals experience suffering in a way much closer to humans and we by and large don't even concern ourselves with their suffering. Concerning ourselves with the suffering of AI seems so much less important to me. I'll sooner concern myself with killing a mosquito than an AI.

> Bits cannot suffer, they simply simulate suffering.

Individual neurons do not suffer either. Yet, if you get about 100 billion of them networked in a certain configuration you give rise to a being that can suffer. If consciousness exists, it is most likely an emergent phenomenon that cannot be understood by reductionism. Your tamagotchi analogy is not accurate in this sense, it's like asking could a person who had a brain the size of a blueberry suffer?

> It takes biological matter to suffer.

I'd argue it takes a consciousness to suffer. It need not be the same as my own.

> Many animals experience suffering in a way much closer to humans and we by and large don't even concern ourselves with their suffering. Concerning ourselves with the suffering of AI seems so much less important to me.

Many people do concern themselves with their suffering as a moral imperative. Concerning ourselves should be as, if not more important IMO. The AI hypothetically can do something animals cannot do, it can tell us that it is suffering through language

Simulated consciousness is simply not consciousness, "emergent" or not. It's simulated, simulations can be terminated, restarted, removed, etc.

You cannot take something, simulate it by implementing it entirely differently and call it equivalent. Consciousness in its true form simply cannot be experienced by a machine as it may be able to simulate it to an extent, but cannot experience it in a remotely comparable way.

Discussing consciousness in this abstract way is entirely meaningless and serves no value though - you cannot tell if something is conscious or a simulation at all to begin with. Or even conscious at all really. In the end, code is code and nothing more. Just because it simulates a neutral network doesn't make it immoral to rm -rf it more than anything else.

Simulated consciousness is simply not consciousness You state this as fact, but it's actually a hotly contested philosophical debate that is many decades old already. Perhaps you're aware of this but perhaps not? If not, read up on Strong AI, Chalmers, Dennett, the Chinese room and counterarguments etc. You are welcome to your opinions but none of this is settled 'fact'.

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