Discussion Thread: AI Welfare Debate Week

Ok--at Toby's encouragement, here are my thoughts:

This is a very old point, but to my mind, at least from a utilitarian perspective, the main reason it's worth working on promoting AI welfare is the risk of foregone upside. I.e. without actively studying what constitutes AI welfare and advocating for producing it, we seem likely to have a future that's very comfortable for ourselves and our descendants--fully automated luxury space communism, if you like--but which contains a very small proportion of the value that could have been created by creating lots of happy artificial minds. So concern for creating AI welfare seems likely to be the most important way in which utilitarian and human-common-sense moral recommendations differ.

It seems to me that the amount of value we could create if we really optimized for total AI welfare is probably greater than the amount of disvalue we'll create if we just use AI tools and allow for suffering machines by accident, since in the latter case the suffering would be a byproduct, not something anyone optimizes for.

But AI welfare work (especially if this includes moral advocacy) just for the sake of avoiding this downside also seems valuable enough to be worth a lot of effort on its own, even if suffering AI tools are a long way off. The animal analogy seems relevant: it's hard to replace factory farming once people have started eating a lot of meat, but in India, where Hinduism has discouraged meat consumption for a long time, less meat is consumed and so factory farming is evidently less widespread.

So in combination, I expect AI welfare work of some kind or another is probably very important. I have almost no idea what the best interventions would be or how cost-effective they would be, so I have no opinion on exactly how much work should go into them. I expect no one really knows at this point. But at face value the topic seems important enough to warrant at least doing exploratory work until we have a better sense of what can be done and how cost-effective it could be, only stopping in the (I think unlikely) event that we can say with some confidence that the best AI welfare work to be done is worse than the best work that can be done in other areas.

(Not an AI welfare/safety expert by any stretch, just adding my two cents here! Also I was very piqued by the banner and loved hovering over the footnote! I've thought about digital sentience, but this banner and this week really put me into a "hmm..." state)

My view leans towards "moderately disagree." (I fluctuated between this, neutral, and slightly agree.) For context, when it's AI safety, I'd say "highly agree." Thoughts behind my current position:

Why I'd prioritize it less: 

• I consider myself longtermist, but I have always grappled with the opportunity costs of highly prioritizing more "speculative" areas. I care about high EV areas, I also grapple with deprioritizing very tangible cause areas with existing beings that have high EV too. When I looked at the table below, I'd lean towards giving more resources towards AW versus making AI welfare right now a priority. 
• I also think about how, if we divert more resources into AI welfare, I worry about the ramifications of diverting more EAs into a very dense, specialized sector. While this specialization is important, I am concerned that it might sometimes lead to a narrower focus that doesn't fully account for the broader, interconnected systems of the world. In contrast, fields like biosecurity often consider a wider range of factors and have a more integrative perspective. This more holistic view can be crucial in addressing complex, multifaceted issues, and one reason I would prioritize AI welfare less is the opportunity costs towards areas that may be more holistic (not saying AI welfare has no reason to be considered holistic)
• I have some concerns that trying to help AI right now might make things worse since we don't fully know yet what's being done now that can make things riskier? (Nathan said something to this effect in this thread).
• I don't know to what extent AI welfare is irreversible compared to unaligned AI
• It seems less likely for multiplanetary civilizations to develop with advanced AI, reducing likelihood of AI systems across the universe, which reduces my prioritizing AI welfare on a universal scale

Why I'd still prioritize it: 

• I can't see myself prescribing a 0% chance AI would be sentient, and I can't see myself prescribing less than (edit:) 2% of resources and talent in effective altruism to something wide-scale I'd hold a possibility of being considered sentient, even if it might be less standard (i.e. more outside average moral circles) because of big value creation, just generally preventing suffering, and potentially preventing additional happiness, all of which I'm highly for.
• I think exploratory and not very tapped-in work needs to be done more, and just establishing enough baseline infrastructure is important for this high EV type of cause (assuming we would say AI will be very widespread)
• I like the trammell's animal welfare analogy

Overall, I agree that resources and talent should be allocated to AI welfare because it's prudent and can prevent future suffering. However, I moderately disagree with it being an EA priority due to its current speculative nature and how I think AI safety. I think AI safety and solving the alignment problem should be a priority, especially in these next few years, though, and hold some confidence in preventing digital suffering. 

Other thoughts:

• I wonder if there'd ever be a conflict between AI welfare and human welfare or the welfare of other beings. Haven't put much thought here. Something that immediately comes to mind is if advanced AI systems would require substantial energy and infrastructure, potentially competing with human needs. From a utilitarian point of view, this presents a significant dilemma. However, there's the argument that solving AI alignment could mitigate these issues, ensuring that AI systems are developed and managed in ways that do not harm human welfare. My current thinking is that there's less likely potential for conflict between AI and human welfare if we solve the alignment problem and improve the policy infrastructure around AI. I might compare bioethics to historical precedents, showing that ethical alignment leads to better welfare outcomes
• Some media that have made me truly feel for AI welfare are "I, Robot," "Her," Black Mirror's "Joan is Awful," and "Klara and the Sun”!

My reasons for not making it a priority:

• it seems like we will be better placed to solve the issue in the future (we will understand AIs much better specifically, and also perhaps will just have much better intellectual tools generally),
• it seems like most of the mistakes we can make by getting this wrong are mistakes we can fix if we get it right later on.

By contrast to existential risk, which we need to get right now or lose the opportunity (and all other opportunities) forever, I don't see a corresponding loss of option value here. Perhaps it's worth thinking about how to ensure we preserve the will to solve the issue through whatever upheaval comes next. But I think that's much easier than actually trying to solve it right now.

edit: I think the first consideration isn't nearly as strong for poverty / health interventions and animal interventions: it feels more like we already know some good things to do there so I'm on board with starting now, especially in cases where we think their effects will compound over time.

For me, a key question is "How much is 5%?". 

Here is a table I found.

So it seems like right now 5% is somewhere in the same range as Animal Welfare and EA Meta funding.

I guess that seems a bit high, given that animals exist and AIs don't.

I think a key benefit of AI work was training AI Safety folks to be around when needed. Having resources at a crucial moment isn't solely about money, it's about having the resource that is useful in that moment. A similar thing to do might be to train philosophers and government staffers and activists who are well versed in the AI welfare arguments who can act if need be. 

Not clear to me that that requires 5% of EA funding though. 

I think the burden of proof lies with those advocating for AI welfare as an EA priority.

So far, I haven't read compelling arguments to change my default.

I have doubts about whether digital or electronic information flows will yield valenced sentience, although I don't rule it out.

But I have much stronger doubts about whether we can ever know what makes these 'digital minds' happy or sad, or even what goes in what direction.

Despite being a panpsychist, I rate it fairly low. I don't see a future where we solve AI safety where there are a lot of suffering AIs. If we fail on safety, then it wont matter what you wrote about AI welfare, the unaligned AI is not going to be moved by it.

My thoughts on the issue:

• Humans are conscious in whatever way that word is normally used
• Our brains are made of matter
• I think it's likely we'll be able to use matter to make other conscious minds
• These minds may be able to replicate far faster than our own
• A huge amount of future consciousness may be non-human
• The wellbeing of huge chunks of funture consciousness are worthy of our concern
• Forecasting is hard and it's not clear how valuable early AI safety work was (maybe it led to much more risk ??)
• Early work on AI welfare might quite plausibly make the problem worse. 
• Part of me would like to get better calibrated on which interventions work and which don't before hugely focusing on such an important issue
• Part of me would like to fund general state capacity work and train experts to be in a better place when this happens