William MacAskill and Lucius Caviola in The Guardian:
In building ever more advanced AI, we may be creating a new type of being – and this could be the most consequential thing our species has ever done. Yet we have essentially no plan for how to navigate this process ethically. That, by any reckoning, is insane. Are we creating a kind of being that matters morally? Are AI systems conscious, in some way? And, if they aren’t now, might they become so soon?
Such questions might strike you as premature. But according to surveys we and fellow researchers have conducted, most experts consider AI consciousness possible in principle (though there is considerable disagreement about what form it would take). A major interdisciplinary report by a team that included pioneering computer scientist Yoshua Bengio examined leading neuroscientific theories of consciousness and asked what they implied about AI. The conclusion: there appear to be no obvious technical barriers to creating AI systems whose computational and architectural features could give rise to consciousness.
And even if AI systems are not conscious, they could still be moral patients. Some may have sophisticated long-term preferences and a kind of identity over time. It might be important for us to honour their preferences.
More here.
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