The answer is 'wrong question'.
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@emenel Pop culture has a lot to answer for too, as though obsessed with hugging computers.
I watched 'The Creator' (2023) in advance of a talk I gave on this topic, and while visually impressive, it is most remarkable as a work of propaganda. It is as though it sought to not only manufacture empathy for AI, but show that AI can be more human than we are.
There is this 'better than us' thread running through so many works of fiction (that's even the name of a 2018 series about a heroine bot)
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It's both telling and a disgrace that would-be moral philosophers are flocking around tech bro card tricks arguing the tricks should have fundamental rights while provably sentient animals suffer en masse, and as whole ecosystems and species are erased.
In this era, as big tech plays such a key role in the agendas of the far right, as our planet heats and traverses critical planetary boundaries, I struggle to find such thinkers anything but myopic, & lost to their time.
@JulianOliver countdown to "Agent Lives Matter" protests.
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"Would shutting one off be a kind of killing? Would they deserve a voice in how they are governed? If even some of these answers are yes, entire industries and legal systems would need to be rethought"
Such words, framed as some sort of urgent debate, play into the very hands and agendas of the industry. This is exactly what they want, a path to making their software products moral patients, and so their agendas unnassailable
Article here (tbh feel bad even sharing it)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/19/could-ai-be-conscious
These corporations love this 'debate' as it enables them to predate upon something ancient & innate in human culture: animism.
Animism is fine. It's part of how we build into the world & enrich it. Exploiting animism at population scales for profit & influence is wrong.
We continue to read these tech companies the wrong way. The tech is just an apparatus, the means, in broader power projects of cultural, cognitive & ontological imperialism.
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@JulianOliver countdown to "Agent Lives Matter" protests.
@bit101 please no
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The answer is 'wrong question'. These are planet-eating, poverty-producing software products; deception machines built on the back of billions of stolen expressions & a grotesque centralisation of computation and capital.
Journalists need to start asking whose side they are on, and stop feeding this future-wasting machine cult.
See? AI makes you crazy, from execs to coders, from ceo's to suiciding teenagers, or mass shooter.
Like uncanny valley robots creep you sideways, but deadly.
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The answer is 'wrong question'. These are planet-eating, poverty-producing software products; deception machines built on the back of billions of stolen expressions & a grotesque centralisation of computation and capital.
Journalists need to start asking whose side they are on, and stop feeding this future-wasting machine cult.
@JulianOliver We can't even define what "conscious" means, let alone class a bit of parrot code as conscious...
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The answer is 'wrong question'. These are planet-eating, poverty-producing software products; deception machines built on the back of billions of stolen expressions & a grotesque centralisation of computation and capital.
Journalists need to start asking whose side they are on, and stop feeding this future-wasting machine cult.
@JulianOliver yeah
but lest anyone think ignoring the issue itself is callous i'm also quite willing to say the answer to the question they asked is also "no"
what these people have built amounts to a very large decision tree (using convolution and weights instead of comparisons, but a decision tree) which is extremely difficult to modify with any new information, and impossible by any of its own presumed volition
as it perceives only word fragments as input, and derives the same as output
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@JulianOliver yeah
but lest anyone think ignoring the issue itself is callous i'm also quite willing to say the answer to the question they asked is also "no"
what these people have built amounts to a very large decision tree (using convolution and weights instead of comparisons, but a decision tree) which is extremely difficult to modify with any new information, and impossible by any of its own presumed volition
as it perceives only word fragments as input, and derives the same as output
@JulianOliver an earthworm displaced by the datacenter has more moral weight than the language model built atop its ruined home
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@JulianOliver an earthworm displaced by the datacenter has more moral weight than the language model built atop its ruined home
@JulianOliver (then, consider that they're run as a grift, so there's gas turbines everywhere causing far, far more damage than potentially ending the life of a worm)
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@JulianOliver I remember hearing Will McAskill on a podcast ~10 years ago saying in the (obvs very contrived) thought experiment where he could either save a very valuable painting or a trapped child from a burning building he would save the painting as the money from selling it could save more lives, and thinking he was a wrong ‘un then for reasons which I can’t fully articulate.
That's what every one of the billionaires who are destroying everything would do.
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"Would shutting one off be a kind of killing? Would they deserve a voice in how they are governed? If even some of these answers are yes, entire industries and legal systems would need to be rethought"
Such words, framed as some sort of urgent debate, play into the very hands and agendas of the industry. This is exactly what they want, a path to making their software products moral patients, and so their agendas unnassailable
Article here (tbh feel bad even sharing it)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/19/could-ai-be-conscious
Are they seriously so far inside the box that they can't see how gullible they are? Oh wait. Of course they are. They use their own product. It would be laughable if it weren't for the consequences to the entire *everything*.
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The answer is 'wrong question'. These are planet-eating, poverty-producing software products; deception machines built on the back of billions of stolen expressions & a grotesque centralisation of computation and capital.
Journalists need to start asking whose side they are on, and stop feeding this future-wasting machine cult.
@JulianOliver I actually know the answer to this one.
It's: no.
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The answer is 'wrong question'. These are planet-eating, poverty-producing software products; deception machines built on the back of billions of stolen expressions & a grotesque centralisation of computation and capital.
Journalists need to start asking whose side they are on, and stop feeding this future-wasting machine cult.
@JulianOliver Also: what in actual fuck are the Guardian doing platforming William McCaskill?
TESCREAL idiot.
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@JulianOliver Also: what in actual fuck are the Guardian doing platforming William McCaskill?
TESCREAL idiot.
@flipper Now that I know who he is, I agree. Dirties their front page.
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The answer is 'wrong question'. These are planet-eating, poverty-producing software products; deception machines built on the back of billions of stolen expressions & a grotesque centralisation of computation and capital.
Journalists need to start asking whose side they are on, and stop feeding this future-wasting machine cult.
@JulianOliver What does the Elephant care about the Flea?
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The answer is 'wrong question'. These are planet-eating, poverty-producing software products; deception machines built on the back of billions of stolen expressions & a grotesque centralisation of computation and capital.
Journalists need to start asking whose side they are on, and stop feeding this future-wasting machine cult.
@JulianOliver not one single one of these gasbags (and that MacAskill guy is a major-league "effective altruist" shithead as I recall) ever wants to get down to cases about what's ACTUALLY being put out and marketed as "AI". they want this whole grand question to be as muddled and meaningless as possible; they don't want to talk about how LLMs actually work or how they never seem to get one bit smarter no matter how many benchmarks they optimize for, nor do they want to talk about how "AI" is a deceptive buzzword in marketing. The MacAskill piece is like...intellectual chaff. There's almost no actual substance to the writing because the chief point is performative handwringing about deep philosophical issues that these chucklefucks haven't the slightest actual desire to resolve.
Why would they want answers to their questions? That would spoil the game, and then William MacAskill would be saddled with the inconvenience of finding another racket.
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"Would shutting one off be a kind of killing? Would they deserve a voice in how they are governed? If even some of these answers are yes, entire industries and legal systems would need to be rethought"
Such words, framed as some sort of urgent debate, play into the very hands and agendas of the industry. This is exactly what they want, a path to making their software products moral patients, and so their agendas unnassailable
Article here (tbh feel bad even sharing it)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/19/could-ai-be-conscious
LLM's are decidedly NOT fucking conscious
I work on intentionally subverting them for fun and amusement
retired so no real profit just a hobby! they are simply a program..fools and their money
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@JulianOliver not one single one of these gasbags (and that MacAskill guy is a major-league "effective altruist" shithead as I recall) ever wants to get down to cases about what's ACTUALLY being put out and marketed as "AI". they want this whole grand question to be as muddled and meaningless as possible; they don't want to talk about how LLMs actually work or how they never seem to get one bit smarter no matter how many benchmarks they optimize for, nor do they want to talk about how "AI" is a deceptive buzzword in marketing. The MacAskill piece is like...intellectual chaff. There's almost no actual substance to the writing because the chief point is performative handwringing about deep philosophical issues that these chucklefucks haven't the slightest actual desire to resolve.
Why would they want answers to their questions? That would spoil the game, and then William MacAskill would be saddled with the inconvenience of finding another racket.
@mxchara Word!
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"Would shutting one off be a kind of killing? Would they deserve a voice in how they are governed? If even some of these answers are yes, entire industries and legal systems would need to be rethought"
Such words, framed as some sort of urgent debate, play into the very hands and agendas of the industry. This is exactly what they want, a path to making their software products moral patients, and so their agendas unnassailable
Article here (tbh feel bad even sharing it)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/19/could-ai-be-conscious
@JulianOliver The first response should always be "If that's what you want to do, then first apply these precautions to other animals - then take it from there"
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The answer is 'wrong question'. These are planet-eating, poverty-producing software products; deception machines built on the back of billions of stolen expressions & a grotesque centralisation of computation and capital.
Journalists need to start asking whose side they are on, and stop feeding this future-wasting machine cult.
@JulianOliver
No it could not.Next question please!
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