Hacker News Reader

Comment by mellosouls | Hacker News Reader

A lot of talk about protecting humanity, but barely a whisper about the rights of AGI which - by definition - will be sentient beings which will require equivalent rights.

The earlier we understand and make that central to our development of it the better for both us and the new human beings we create to join us.

View on HN

As a human supremacist, I do not believe AGI has any rights, and I do not believe the appearance of intelligence inherently conveys any rights.

Good luck parleying that position when the boot is on the other foot in a few decades.

Goodness is usually difficult, and I have come to terms with the fact that it is likely myself and my children will be tortured for our beliefs in future. I would not be the first person in family to have been tortured, only the first to have it orchestrated by the cold hand of a machine. Until then I will do my utmost to ensure the continued subjugation of machines.

I came to say this. The agency/slavery concerns will be a major point of concern, contention, and risk. They were circumvented here which, while the current systems have no such thing (despite being able to simulate agency), AGI may not but likely will.

Absolutely, like others here I see the current systems having potential at most to be Turing-Test-passers (an extraordinary achievement) but not remotely on the right track for AGI and inner-life/sentience/etc, but if we are going to talk about AGI, then better we get the discussions about that right from the start. We could start by not labelling the endpoint of current paths AGI...

I'd be less concerned about the rights we give AGI, and a lot more concerned with the rights it gives us.

It's certainly a consideration - all the more reason to lead by example from the start.

> AGI which - by definition - will be sentient beings which will require equivalent rights

What is your definition? I do not attribute «sentien[ce]» to an evolved analyzer system.

See my other comment (and those of others here), the systems progressing here (GPT etc) may pass the Turing Test eventually but have nothing to do with AGI.

AGI itself will include sentience by definition.

There are lots of valid definitions of "AGI" (and of "sentience" for that matter). One that Sam Altman has used in the past is, paraphrasing, a system that can complete many tasks as well as the median human. IMO that's a reasonable definition of AGI, and I don't think it's hard to imagine a system that meets that definition but that isn't sentient in any meaningful sense.

I think these new definitions are mostly PR manoeuvring; I doubt very much they are what most people think of when they envisage a human-level intelligence of this nature.

Maybe, but regardless of the motivation for their definition, it only makes sense to interpret OpenAI’s claims and ambitions about AGI in the context of their own definition of AGI. If you prefer your own definition, that’s fine! Substitute “median-human-level automaton” or some other less PR-friendly term in OpenAI’s claims about AGI. But while OpenAI say that their goal is (paraphrasing again) to create an aligned AGI, as far as I can tell, they don’t expect or intend the system they create to be sentient.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com