FutureOfCitizenship

How good is AI at manipulating us when we're prepared? Should we build bots in such a way that they deserve legal rights? Should be try to build AI tools or beings? Meia did her Ph.D. in psychology and a postdoc on human-machine interactions, so these takes are from a psychology perspective:

Neurotech is Humanity’s Next Frontier! I’ve been investing in neurotech since 2021 and working with teams building BCIs, NeuroAI, and connectomics. It now feels like AI did in ~2019. We are entering an extraordinary era: neurotech already restores functions, it can enhance our capabilities, and will evolve what it means to be human. PLC Neurotech is the fund backing the extraordinary founders and defining companies of this booming industry.

Could preventing AI agents from pursuing their own goals make them more dangerous? @petersalib explains how frustrated goals could incentivise AIs to escape human control, even without being malicious. Full episode with @dioscuri: prism-global.com/podcast/pet…

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Kudos to @sama for acknowledging the problem of other minds and uncertainty about AI consciousness! But the rest of his answer in this clip is disappointing. Here are three related issues: First, consciousness and personhood are not the same. Consciousness is the capacity for subjective experience, and personhood is possession of duties and/or rights. We can treat an entity as conscious without treating it as a person; for example, we extend welfare protections to animals without treating them as persons (unfortunately). We can also treat an entity as a person without treating it as conscious; for example, we treat corporations as persons without extending them welfare protections. Both consciousness/welfare and personhood/duties or rights can also come in many different shapes and sizes, so even if we did treat animals or AI systems as persons, that would not necessarily mean extending them all of the same duties and rights that humans have. Second, @sama focuses on only one side of a two-sided risk equation. One risk is that we might design AI systems to appear more likely to be conscious than they are. This could lead to over-attribution of consciousness and over-extension of moral concern. Another risk is that we design AI systems to appear less likely to be conscious than they are. This could lead to under-attribution of consciousness and under-extension of moral concern. With both animals and AI systems, both of these risks can be quite likely and quite harmful in some cases, so there is no easy, universal way to err on the side of caution. Fortunately, thoughtful policies such as the emotional alignment design policy allow us to take a calibrated approach to mitigating both risks at once. Third, even insofar as we focus on risks to humanity, there are risks associated with both over-extension and under-extension of moral concern. On the over-extension side, treating AI systems as full human-like persons could harm humanity by creating liability shields for humans that contribute to misuse, or by creating political powers for AI systems that contribute to loss of control. On the under-extension side, treating AI systems as nothing more than mere property could harm humanity by creating an adversarial dynamic between humans and increasingly capable and autonomous AI systems. Mitigating both of these risks at the same time may require striking a balance, and determining how to strike this balance requires careful scientific research and policy analysis. In short, we should take AI consciousness seriously not only because the distribution of consciousness is uncertain, but also because it matters for both humans and (potentially) AI systems that we get it right.

4/5 How might it work? A non-person monitor AI (like Bengio’s Scientist AI) might trigger temporary quarantine, followed by a review by a board of humans and AIs. Existing due process norms can be adapted for AI persons.