Google could build a conscious AI in three months

We've been struggling with natural consciousnesses, both human and animal, for a long long time, and it's not obvious to me that artificial consciousness can avoid any of that pain.

You're right, but there are a couple of important differences:

• There is widespread agreement on the status of many animals. People believe most tetrapods are conscious. The terrible stuff we do to them is done in spite of this.
• We have a special opportunity at the start of our interactions with AI systems to decide how we're going to relate to them. It is better to get things right off the bat then to try to catch up (and shift public opinion) decades later.
• We have a lot more potential control over artificial systems than we do over natural creatures. It is possible that very simple changes and low-cost changes could make a huge difference to their welfare (or whether they have any.)

Thanks a lot! Would you mind pointing me to a direction that allows me to stay up to date on this niche? Also, do you have any contextual information to share about the paper you linked? Was it controversial for example?

Thanks!

I'm not particularly worried that we may harm AIs that do not have valenced states, at least in the near term. The issue is more over precedent and expectations going forward. I would worry about a future in which we create and destroy conscious systems willy-nilly because of how it might affect our understanding of our relationship to them, and ultimately to how we act toward AIs that do have morally relevant states. These worries are nebulous, and I very well might be wrong to be so concerned, but it feels risky to rush into things.

What about a large look-up table that mapped conversation so far -> what to say next and was able to pass the Turing test? This program would have all the external signs of consciousness, but would you really describe it as a conscious being in the same way that you are?

Turing test is sentient

I'm not sure why we should think that the Turing test provides any evidence regarding consciousness. Dogs can't pass the test, but that is little reason to think that they're not conscious. Large language models might be able to pass the test before long, but it looks like they're doing something very different inside, and so the fact that they are able to hold conversations is little reason to think they're anything like us. There is a danger with being too conservative. Sure, assuming sentience may avoid causing unnecessary harms, but if we mistakenly believe some systems are sentient when they are not, we may waste time or resources for the sake of their (non-existent) welfare.

Your suggestion may simply be that we have nothing better to go on, and we've got to draw the line somewhere. If there is no right place to draw the line, then we might as well pick something. But I think there are better and worse place to draw the line. And I don't think our epistemic situation is quite so bad. We may not ever be completely sure which precise theory is right, but we can get a sense of which theories are contenders by continuing to explore the human brain and develop existing theories, and we can adopt policies that respect the diversity of opinion.

Meanwhile, we can focus less on ethics and more on alignment.

This strikes me as somewhat odd, as alignment and ethics are clearly related. On the one hand, there is the technical question of how to align an AI to specific values. But there is also the important question of which values to align. How we think about digital consciousness may come be extremely important to that.