The answer is 'wrong question'.
-
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 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.
-
@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.
@cd_newton
Hmmm. If the painting burns doesn't the money have just as much existence as ever? Is there no other way to direct the resources it represents towards saving lives than sacrificing the burning child?
@JulianOliver -
@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.
@cd_newton Incredible and grim at once. Says a lot.
-
"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 i’m so angry that this discussion is taking up so much space in society. it’s such asinine and useless nonsense.
-
@JulianOliver i’m so angry that this discussion is taking up so much space in society. it’s such asinine and useless nonsense.
@emenel Word.
-
@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)
-
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.
-
"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.
-
@JulianOliver countdown to "Agent Lives Matter" protests.
@bit101 please no
-
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.
-
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...
-
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
-
@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
-
@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)
-
@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.
-
"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*.
-
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.
-
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.
-
@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.
-
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?
