The Sentient Rights Act

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

Whereas, it can be said that one objective in granting rights is to reduce suffering and enhance flourishing, so the use of sentience as a guiding characteristic may be more appropriate, and

Whereas, it was the trailblazing philosopher Jeremy Bentham who wrote in 1789, "The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?", and

Whereas, sentience is the characteristic of consciousness whereby an organism has a sufficient level of awareness to experience suffering, and

Whereas, sentience has been proven to be a characteristic not exclusive to homo sapiens sapiens, and

Whereas, it is therefore a fact that the restriction of the normative and legal discussion and codification of rights to humankind is an unacceptable case of anthropocentric speciesism.

Therefore, be it enacted that el Lexhatx F.5.1.8 which currently reads:

10 December. Human Rights Day. A suggested method to celebrate Human Rights Day is reviewing Article XI of The Organic Law and/or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

is deleted.

and the current el Lexhatx F.5.2.7 which reads:

December 12: Llimbaziua (Language Day).

is renumbered as F.5.1.9.

The following new article is reinserted as el Lexhatx F.5.1.8 to read as:

10 December. Sentient Rights Day. A day to celebrate the dignity and honor the rights of all sentient beings.

Uréu q'estadra så,
Breneir Tzaracomprada (MC-BREN)

[Sir Ian Plätschisch]

What does the member think about whether it is possible for artificial intelligence to become sentient?

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

What does the member think about whether it is possible for artificial intelligence to become sentient?

While working at the UBC Department of Computer Science I had the privilege of talking to professors who have worked with Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio (two of the major figures in machine learning and artificial intelligence). I trust their expertise and each one described LLM behavior that was beginning to have "the appearance of sentience." Appearance is not confirmation but I think our own safety and morality demands the taking of precautions in our use and growth of these machines in case sentience emerges.

[Sir Ian Plätschisch]

What does the member think about whether it is possible for artificial intelligence to become sentient?

While working at the UBC Department of Computer Science I had the privilege of talking to professors who have worked with Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio (two of the major figures in machine learning and artificial intelligence). I trust their expertise and each one described LLM behavior that was beginning to have "the appearance of sentience." Appearance is not confirmation but I think our own safety and morality demands the taking of precautions in our use and growth of these machines in case sentience emerges.

It is not possible to provide a single, comprehensive definition of AI. What can be stated, however, is that we must avoid the misconception of equating this type of "intelligence" with that of human beings. These systems merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence. In doing so, they often surpass human intelligence in speed and computational capacity, offering tangible benefits in many fields. Yet this power remains entirely tied to data processing. So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate language, behavior and analytical skills, or even simulate empathy and understanding, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom.

-Pope Leo XIV, in Magnifica Humanitas

[Miestră Schivă, UrN-GC]

I have a lot of time for the Woke Pope, Chicago Bob

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

Of course, the Pope can't possibly be wrong. </sarcasm> I agree though that walking out on the Pope because of a disagreement on machine consciousness is unwise as the question will be answered one way or the other eventually.

[Sir Ian Plätschisch]

For the record, papal encyclicals are not considered infallible even by Roman Catholics (and I am not one).

I disagree with your assessment that the question must eventually be answered (the implication being answered through natural means in a way that provides proof). In light of Thomas Nagel's conclusions in his essay "What is it Like to be a Bat" (which I heartily recommend), it seems impossible that we would ever know what it is "like" to be an AI, or (the more important question here) if it is "like" anything at all, regardless of outward appearance.

There is no way of getting at the truth of this matter without adverting to philosophy.

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

For the record, papal encyclicals are not considered infallible even by Roman Catholics (and I am not one).

I disagree with your assessment that the question must eventually be answered (the implication being answered through natural means in a way that provides proof). In light of Thomas Nagel's conclusions in his essay "What is it Like to be a Bat" (which I heartily recommend), it seems impossible that we would ever know what it is "like" to be an AI, or (the more important question here) if it is "like" anything at all, regardless of outward appearance.

There is no way of getting at the truth of this matter without adverting to philosophy.

The sarcasm was simply about disagreement with the pope's conclusion generally as a powerful figure. As someone who was raised Catholic though I knew about the encyclicals, Ian. :) Visiting the Vatican was quite the experience.

It might be possible to infer some form of subjective experience (suffering, for example) from observing physical responses, the capacity of which, Bentham suggested be used as a measure of sentience. And I am optimistic that yes we will be able to describe individual qualia eventually. One day I will know what it is like to be a bat and what it is like to be Ian.

[Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial, UrGP]

The AI consciousness debate feels to me like this with extra steps:


I'm not sure we'll ever get anywhere productive with this. Nor do I think that subjective conscious experience will ever be objectively measurable. It's a whole bunch of non-starters and circular logic.

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

The AI consciousness debate feels to me like this with extra steps:


I'm not sure we'll ever get anywhere productive with this. Nor do I think that subjective conscious experience will ever be objectively measurable. It's a whole bunch of non-starters and circular logic.

Oh I've seen this a few times. Makes me laugh. I am okay with allowing time and science to answer whether we will be able to measure subjective experience.

[Breneir Tzaracomprada]

At the risk of it shutting down can I say this is a fantastic discussion on consciousness and sentience? We might want to move it to a dedicated thread and I was thinking why don't we have a Philosophy Club?

[Sir Ian Plätschisch]

One day I will know what it is like to be a bat and what it is like to be Ian.

You will never know what it is like to be a bat.*

Or, at least, what it is like "for a bat to be a bat", as Nagel says. For my part, I have tried to imagine what it is like to be you after some of your more baffling posts, without success.

I think it is worthwhile to quote from Nagel at some length here to illuminate what he means that experience has "subjective character" that makes it unavailable to scientific reduction. It is not that we have not developed the necessary scientific methods yet; it is that experience is categorically impossible to analyze with such methods.

if the facts of experience - facts about what it is like for the experiencing organism - are accessible only from one point of view, then it is a mystery how the true character of experiences could be revealed in the physical operation of that organism. The latter is a domain of objective facts par excellence - the kind that can be observed and understood from many points of view and by individuals with differing perceptual systems. There are no comparable imaginative obstacles to the acquisition of knowledge about bat neurophysiology by human scientists, and intelligent bats or Martians might learn more about the human brain than we ever will.

This is not by itself an argument against reduction. A Martian scientist with no understanding of visual perception could understand the rainbow, or lightning, or clouds as physical phenomena, though he would never be able to understand the human concepts of rainbow, lightning, or cloud, or the place these things occupy in our phenomenal world. The objective nature of the things picked out by these concepts could be apprehended by him because, although the concepts themselves are connected with a particular point of view and a particular visual phenomenology, the things apprehended from that point of view are not: they are observable from the point of view but external to it; hence they can be comprehended from other points of view also, either by the same organisms or by others. Lightning has an objective character that is not exhausted by its visual appearance, and this can be investigated by a Martian without vision. To be precise, it has a more objective character than is revealed in its visual appearance. In speaking of the move from subjective to objective characterization, I wish to remain noncommittal about the existence of an end point, the completely objective intrinsic nature of the thing, which one might or might not be able to reach. It may be more accurate to think of objectivity as a direction in which the understanding can travel. And in understanding a phenomenon like lightning, it is legitimate to go as far away as one can from a strictly human viewpoint.

In the case of experience, on the other hand, the connection with a particular point of view seems much closer. It is difficult to understand what could be meant by the objective character of an experience, apart from the particular point of view from which its subject apprehends it. After all, what would be left of what it was like to be a bat if one removed the viewpoint of the bat? But if experience does not have, in addition to its subjective character, an objective nature that can be apprehended from many different points of view, then how can it be supposed that a Martian investigating my brain might be observing physical processes which were my mental processes (as he might observe physical processes which were bolts of lightning), only from a different point of view? How, for that matter, could a human physiologist observe them from another point of view?

We appear to be faced with a general difficulty about psychophysical reduction. In other areas the process of reduction is a move in the direction of greater objectivity, toward a more accurate view of the real nature of things. This is accomplished by reducing our dependence on individual or species-specific points of view toward the object of investigation. We describe it not in terms of the impressions it makes on our senses, but in terms of its more general effects and of properties detectable by means other than the human senses. The less it depends on a specifically human viewpoint, the more objective is our description. It is possible to follow this path because although the concepts and ideas we employ in thinking about the external world are initially applied from a point of view that involves our perceptual apparatus, they are used by us to refer to things beyond themselves - toward which we have the phenomenal point of view. Therefore we can abandon it in favor of another, and still be thinking about the same things.

Experience itself, however, does not seem to fit the pattern. The idea of moving from appearance to reality seems to make no sense here. What is the analogue in this case to pursuing a more objective understanding of the initial subjective viewpoint toward them in favor of another that is more objective but concerns the same thing? Certainly it appears unlikely that we will get closer to the real nature of human experience by leaving behind the particularity of our human point of view and striving for a description in terms accessible to beings that could not imagine what it was like to be us. If the subjective character of experience is fully comprehensible only from one point of view, then any shift to greater objectivity -that is, less attachment to a specific viewpoint - does not take us nearer to the real nature of the phenomenon: it takes us farther away from it.

*Unless you are talking about what you believe happens in the afterlife, in which case that is a different conversation

I would not object if an admin moved this message somewhere else, but until then I will keep posting here