The ethics of machine consciousness | Thomas Metzinger
64Thomas Metzinger discusses the ethics of machine learning as part of the IAI Academy online courses.
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Artificial consciousness could soon emerge - and with it, a potential boom of limitless artificial suffering. Taking new research into the experience of pure awareness in meditation as his starting point, Theoretical Philosophy Professor and member of the European Commission's High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, explains why we should care about computer suffering and what to do about it.
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The idea of machines gaining consciousness has both enthralls and terrifies. Yet despite various fears, highly-funded AI research ploughs ahead. And as Professor Thomas Metzinger argues, there are serious ethical questions of non-biological consciousness that are being wilfully ignored by policy-makers and researchers alike. In particular, given that, for humans, conscious experience is also an experience of suffering, so why are we so keen to inflict the same fate on machines?
How will we be able to tell that a programme is crying out in pain? Does the suffering of computers matter any less than the suffering of animals, or other conscious beings without a voice? Do the apparent benefits of research for its own sake outweigh the potential harms of the subjects we might create? And what really is suffering, after all?
Thomas Metzinger is a philosopher and professor of theoretical philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz.
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"Thomas Metzinger", michaelthurm. Edited. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode