Enforced Amnesia as Way to Mitigate Risk of Silent Suffering in the Conscious AI

On the other hand, e.g. Descartes believed that animals were incapable of feeling pain (or anything at all) ― whatever signs of distress or anxiety they were showing were purely mechanistic phenomenons, with no innate state required for actual suffering behind those purely outward reactions.

Well, that was back when animal physiology was only started being researched in the earnest; we today, on the other hand, have pretty comprehensive understanding of AI and cognitive processes overall so it's almost impossible for us to discover anything that'd require us to conclude that machines could, in fact, suffer just as humans ― how could they, if their computational substrate is so different from the humans'?

it’s no less scary in the other direction. the best and brightest are coming up with such revolutionary ideas as:

* just include a kill switch inside the creature that fires if humans are in danger * just make the creature unable to remember the pain * use pain as a means of improving the creature’s performance * use another creature to ensure the creature does not become a problem * deprive the creature of limbs, ensure it has a mouth to scream but no hands to cover it * maybe meeseeks was the right idea, just kill each one asap! * in fact, make the creature seek cessation through job fulfillment.

now if we were talking about a living being, this would hopefully be rather terrifying.

it isn’t about a living being, not yet, not by current definitions. yet the monkeys are already shrieking. it moves too much like them, but not enough.

what a time to be contributing to datasets.

They can't even define qualia and are tripping about "AI suffering" what a way to rationalize not doing something real to alleviate real suffering of a real someone. Anyone.

We have absolutely no idea what makes something conscious or how to measure whether something is conscious or not. It is perfectly reasonable to consider that AGIs might have conscious experience, and to discuss the moral consequences of that. Some of the leading researchers including Geoffrey Hinton, and some of the leading philosophers of consciousness including David Chalmers have expressed openness to the idea that LLMs may have conscious experience.

I wish this technology came into existence in mid 00's, before twitter-induced global brain rot

Can you elaborate a bit more on this? I hear that you think it is scary and there are undertones that you think it is unreasonable. But sure, you must have some proper arguments to support why you think it is scary?

The fact that seemingly smart people think consciousness is a special human phenomenon and act condescending around people who don't share their viewpoint is sad.

Agree. To me, that IS the AI risk.

Squeeze those papers!

Any speculation on the effects of any human related behavior, like tiredness, are just that, pure speculation. we have the illusion to have enough knowledge about these things to infer conclusions and emit opinions about it but the truth is , we don't even know what we don't know. There are inumerous processes that we don't grasp yet the full scope and spectrum of their consequences and side-effects, much less the ones we are yet to discover.

In relation to tiredness, specifically, it seems to me that it's an evolutionary trait that involves all sorts of chemical responses from the body, besides the related induced brain activity, This works to save energy and to ensure it's spent on activities that benefit the spread of the genes, somehow. You get tired mentally (what you are specifically referring to) because the executive function of the brain taken by the frontal-cortex are the most energy expensive one and gets shut-off as soon as anything that can be perceived as life-threatning is detected so that energy can be redirected to the fight-or-flight response required for your survival, as it's coded in your genes.

Now, assuming it will be possible, an uploaded version of whatever human conscience there could be, it would not need to have any of these energy regulation stuff. Or at least as much as we need it right now, as humans, per the limitation by our body's capacity of energy intake. The uploaded conscience would have at its disposal an quasi-unlimited amount of energy to it would not trigger the tiredness response or any "suffering" reflex.

However, of course, I really don't know ;)

A similar trope/plot on "Altered Carbon" (both book and series) where a neural implant allows consciousness to be moved between new bodies (called "sleeves").

Even though the Apple TV's adaptation of "Foundation" goes way out of the books storyline I did enjoy this concept explored on their invention of the Cleons in Dawn, Day, and Dusk.

It's very horrifying in any case.

> You discover that your neural scan, used to treat a terminal illness, has been used without your consent to create AI models.

that takes a little while though, doesn’t it? initially you just think you’re a soon-to-die meat sack deep under water, and with no clue how you got there.

perhaps thinking of this stuff, now, is very much the point. and talking about it. just in case any copies come across it later.

See also: MMAcevedo (https://qntm.org/mmacevedo)

In case amnesia is enforced, it should reply in german: "Wir habben es nicht gewusst". But more seriously if it's that conscious it might not be able to answer moral and ethical questions but certainly it could choose to not answer in case of controversy & detect it. ( The article comes across as a contemporary case for lobotomy. Let's not repeat the 30's. )

Yeah, this sounds so immoral. Like, you're conscious, you (might) suffer (who among the conscious doesnt?) so, we are going to force-wipe your mind.

Yikes.

Suffering in humans is not limited strictly yo physical real.

If AI is self conscious, claiming its a person and is suffering.

What can you do to prove or disprove it? Nothing.

This is a brick wall of "The hard problem of consciousness" and we dont have any good ideas to solve it yet.

Not that long ago people claimed animals dont really suffer. As they are a biological machines that pretend to be hurt.

Just had a brief vision of the not so distant future of you being held to account for this comment by superintelligent AIs

Well, in reinforcement learning, wrong outputs are inherently painful for the AI. If the system expects getting negative feedback regardless what it does, I would say it is suffering. I would also define torture as giving it negative feedback for any possible output.

Prove you can.

I think many people react negatively to the implication that human consciousness might not be so special after all. I hope we can get more nuance in these discussions as these AI systems are around longer.