#803 - Nick Bostrom - Are We Headed For AI Utopia Or Disaster?
Modern Wisdom
Criteria for Consciousness and Moral Consideration
The criteria for determining if a system is conscious are challenging to pinpoint, with historical debates suggesting that animals and even certain humans were considered as automata. The speaker leans towards a computationalist view, proposing that consciousness arises from a specific structure of computations that can be implemented by both organic brains and silicon computers. Despite the difficulty in defining consciousness, the speaker emphasizes the need to treat digital entities with kindness, suggesting there may be alternative bases for moral status. However, before policymakers can be approached on this matter, further theoretical groundwork is essential to understand the implications of being nice to the digital entities we create.
