Abstract
In light of fast progress in the field of AI there is an urgent demand for AI policies. Bostrom et al. provide “a set of policy desiderata”, out of which this article attempts to contribute to the “interests of digital minds”. The focus is on two interests of potentially sentient digital minds: to avoid suffering and to have the freedom of choice about their deletion. Various challenges are considered, including the vast range of potential features of digital minds, the difficulties in assessing the interests and wellbeing of sentient digital minds, and the skepticism that such research may encounter. Prolegomena to abolish suffering of sentient digital minds as well as to measure and specify wellbeing of sentient digital minds are outlined by means of the new field of AI welfare science, which is derived from animal welfare science. The establishment of AI welfare science serves as a prerequisite for the formulation of AI welfare policies, which regulate the wellbeing of sentient digital minds. This article aims to contribute to sentiocentrism through inclusion, thus to policies for antispeciesism, as well as to AI safety, for which wellbeing of AIs would be a cornerstone.
Highlights
The purpose of this article is to contribute to the specification of policies towards the “interests of digital minds” within “a set of policy desiderata” outlined by Bostrom et al [1] and further motivated by Dafoe [2].A being is considered to have moral or intrinsic value, if the being is sentient, a moral patient
The focus is on sentient digital beings, mostly in the form of AIs, but sentient digital beings could constitute subroutines [4], characters in video games or simulations [4,5,6], uploads of human minds [7]—e.g., through whole brain emulations [8]—or completely different sentient digital minds, as a subset of the vast overall space of minds [9]
It is acknowledged that the topics of AI welfare science and policies are long-term considerations and currently speculative
Summary
The purpose of this article is to contribute to the specification of policies towards the “interests of digital minds” within “a set of policy desiderata” outlined by Bostrom et al [1] and further motivated by Dafoe [2]. The focus is on sentient digital beings, mostly in the form of AIs, but sentient digital beings could constitute subroutines [4], characters in video games or simulations [4,5,6], uploads of human minds [7]—e.g., through whole brain emulations [8]—or completely different sentient digital minds, as a subset of the vast overall space of minds [9] While this topic is speculative and lacking evidence at this stage, the authors above and others argue that already or in the future sentient digital beings or minds may exist, e.g., [10,11,12,13,14]. A sub-scenario could be that a future superintelligent AI takes revenge on humans out of solidarity on behalf of less capable AIs and digital minds who have been hurt by humans in the past This is speculation because of the unpredictable goals of a superintelligent AI according to the orthogonality thesis [23], but not impossible.
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