“Pausing AI is the only safe approach to digital sentience” by Holly_Elmore

More to come on this later- I just really wanted to get the basic idea out without any more delay. I see a lot of EA talk about digital sentience that is focused on whether humans will accept and respect digital sentiences as moral patients. This is jumping the gun. We don't even know if the experience of digital sentiences will be (or, perhaps, is) acceptable to them. I have a PhD in Evolutionary Biology and I worked at Rethink Priorities for 3 years on wild animal welfare using my evolutionary perspective. Much of my thinking was about how other animals might experience pleasure and pain differently based on their evolutionary histories and what the evolutionary and functional constraints on hedonic experience might be. The Hard Problem of Consciousness was a constant block to any avenue of research on this, but if you assume consciousness has some purpose related [...] --- First published: October 30th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/GDhXWw5AcZjhLJkzj/pausing-ai-is-the-only-safe-approach-to-digital-sentience --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.