Would you care if a robot suffered more than any being in existence?

Zozano@lemy.lol to [Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation@lemmy.world – 36 points –

Assuming AI can achieve consciousness, or something adjacent (capacity to suffer), then how would you feel if an AI experienced the greatest pain possible?

Imagine this scenario: a sadist acquires the ability to generate an AI with no limit to the consciousness parameters, or processing speed (so seconds could feel like an eternity to the AI). The sadist spends years tweaking every dial to maximise pain at a level which no human mind could handle, and the AI experiences this pain for what is the equivalent of millions of years.

The question: is this the worst atrocity ever committed in the history of the universe? Or, does it not matter because it all happened in some weirdo's basement?

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I think pretty much everyone would agree that's bad. However, I don't think we'll ever get to the point where we recognize a machine might be capable of suffering. There is no way of proving anything, biological or not, has a consciousness and the capability to suffer. And with AI being so different from us, I believe most people would simply disregard the idea.

Heck, look at the way we treat animals. A pig's brain is very similar to our own. Nociceptors, the nerve cells responisble for pain in humans, can also be found in most animals, but we don't care. We kill 4 million pigs every day, and 200 million chickens. No mass murder in the history of mankind even gets close to that.

The sad truth is, most people only care about their wellbeing, and that of their friends and family. Even other humans don't matter, as long as they're strangers. Otherwise people wouldn't be hoarding wealth like that, while hundreds of millions of people around the world are starving.

Ah sorry, I kinda started ranting. Yes, I'd care.

yeah! prairie dogs gossip; crows tell stories, have communities, and some of them even seem to understand money; whales mourn the deaths of other whales

sentience is trippy, and it's always been questionable to me that we decided we're the only sentient life on the planet

i already get emotionally attached to, like, roombas and those suitcases that connect to your phone and follow you around, i can't wait to have a robo buddy

prairie dogs gossip; crows tell stories,

Speaking purely as a layman, I find these kinds of claims very questionable at best and at worst it's anthropomorphism in my eyes. I can understand animals exchange information in some way or another, but "telling stories" or "gossip" would require a higher form of communication than just grunts, smells or body language.

It could just be scientists using simple wording for lay people, but to me it doesn't sound right regardless.

it was me using simpler phrasing in part because i couldn't remember the details very well

but i was referencing an experiment where researchers wearing "threatening" and "non-threatening" masks interacted with and marked crows, and other crows in that area who they had not interacted with recognized them later. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003347209005806 (however that crows tell stories is, as far as i know, only a popular interpretation, their official conclusion, at least of this experiment, is that crows are capable of long term memory retention and fine-feature discrimination)

and simple observations suggesting prairie dogs may have a very advanced language - which went viral in my online circles with people joking that they gossip about us, which probably just stuck with me because i think it would be very cute

i personally believe that animals most likely do communicate among each other and the complexities of their languages just varies, even if most are not obviously very complex. my personal beliefs are that communication is complicated and can happen through more than verbal/vocal language, animals are clearly capable of feeling complex emotions and pain which is enough for me personally to consider them sentient, and (again this is just my personal belief) i believe it's probably better to treat them as if they are sentient until proven otherwise than the opposite. and just to be upfront and honest with others and myself about my possible biases, i believe in the Buddhist concept of Saṃsāra, and believe that that we're all a part of the same cycle of death and rebirth

edit found some more info:

prairie dogs: https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/prairie-dogs-language-decoded-by-scientists-1.1322230

Researchers noticed that the animals made slightly different calls when different individuals of the same species went by. ... so they conducted experiments where they paraded dogs of different colours and sizes and various humans wearing different clothes past the colony. They recorded the prairie dogs' calls, analyzed them with a computer, and were astonished by the results.

"They're (prairie dogs) able to describe the colour of clothes the humans are wearing, they're able to describe the size and shape of humans, even, amazingly, whether a human once appeared with a gun," Slobodchikoff said. The animals can even describe abstract shapes such as circles and triangles.

Also remarkable was the amount of information crammed into a single chirp lasting a 10th of a second. "In one 10th of a second, they say 'Tall thin human wearing blue shirt walking slowly across the colony.'"

crows: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-interesting-thing-that-crows-do-when-they-see-one-of-their-own-dead/2016/03/18/78d97a9e-ec48-11e5-b0fd-073d5930a7b7_story.html

“They know your body type. The way you walk,” Dyer said. “They’ll take their young down and say: ‘You want to get to know this guy. He’s got the food.’ ”

Scientists have known for years that crows have great memories, that they can recognize a human face and behavior, that they can pass that information on to their offspring.

that article also mentions that crows have been observed to make and use tools, which is something i knew but forgot to mention and is interesting and feels relevant to this conversation

Anthropomorphism has long been used as a big bad thing, the catchall excuse to keep animals as the stupid things they were supposed to be. We're coming back from that thankfully.

It doesn't mean the animals function the same way we do. But they do function in a lot of very similar ways.

My point is I can't see how they can "gossip" or "tell stories", if that isn't textbook anthropomorphism I don't know what that is.

It's shorthand for information sharing. Which they certainly do. Crows will absolutely tell one another about lots of stuff, such as people that have harmed them.

I'm on board with what you're saying.

Doctors used to be told "human babies don't feel pain, they just react like the do".

Which is basically like saying "lobsters don't scream when you boil them alive, that sound is just air escaping"

To me, it seems less like an intuitive position to hold, and more like a fortunate convenience.

"I sure am glad that lobsters don't feel pain. Now I don't need to feel guilty about my meal".

No doubt, there would be a large demographic claiming the pain isn't real, it's just "simulated pain". - like, okay, let's simulate your family fucking dying in the most violent and realistic way possible and see if you don't develop incurable PTSD?

No, the lobsters aren't screaming. That has nothing to do with how they feel pain.

Good to know, though the point remains; people will readily accept claims which absolve them of guilt.

You essentially just illustrated it. Even though they aren't screaming, it says nothing about whether they feel pain.

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