The Importance of Sentience

Robinson: I think the object level arguments are that there's a lot we don't know about sentience and it's natural to wonder if it occurs in AI systems. And worrying that AI systems might be sentience also points towards those things. So you sometimes see this narrative that like AI companies maybe intentionally stoking concern about AI sentience because I guess the theory is it makes their products seem more impressive or something. In fact, there's nothing that big tech companies would like more than for people to shut up about this issue because it's already caused them a headache. Robinson: If your ultimate goal is to slow down or regulate these technologies, then there's common ground here that you