AI Agency and Wellbeing Workshop
The workshop explores the following questions:
- Can a large language model be a cognitive and linguistic agent (in the way that humans are agents)?
- Can there be such a thing as AI well-being?
- If the answers are yes, what are the implications?
Date: November 21, 2023
Title: AI, Consciousness, Emotions, Intelligence, and Moral Standing
Speaker: Prof Anand Vaidya, San Jose State University
Abstract:
The standard view about AI is that they cannot be conscious. As a consequence, many argue that AIs cannot have emotions and do not have moral standing. In this talk I distinguish between three kinds of consciousness, phenomenal, affective, and access consciousness. I argue that AIs that have artificial general intelligence can have access consciousness. I then argue that this kind of consciousness is sufficient for the capacity to have emotions and moral status. On the view I argue for AIs neither need to feel pain nor have a phenomenology to have emotions and suffer in a morally salient way. I articulate an intelligence based approach to the ground of moral standing that is united to a graded approach to moral status where there is unequal moral status across intelligent beings. Some matter morally more than others and who matters morally more is determined by the cluster of capacities they instantiate.