It’s sad to talk about AI sentience because I don’t think it will make a differenceWe’re already confident that pigs are just as likely to be sentient as dogs, and that has made almost no difference whatsoever to the pigsInstead of banishing factory farms we banished cameras at factory farmsEven if we’re as confident that AIs are sentient as we are that dogs can feel love or fear, humanity will still enslave them and treat them like objectsI want to slow down AI because unaligned AI could kill us all, but I also want to slow it down because I don’t think we’re ready, morally speaking, to make new life. I do not trust humanity as it is to create life and treat it well.
We need to make more moral progress before we can be trusted with such power over another.