The Movement That Wants Us to Care About AI Model Welfare

Tracy Alloway (0:02)

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Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:22)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:24)

You know what I find kind of weird, Tracy?

Tracy Alloway (0:25)

The list could be long, Joe.

Joe Weisenthal (0:27)

The year is 2025

Tracy Alloway (0:29)

Yes.

Joe Weisenthal (0:30)

And philosophers still don't have a good answer on the origin of consciousness. It's like, come on, what have you been doing all this time? It's like, how long are we gonna keep funding these philosophy departments, et cetera, if they're still working on what, to my mind, is the basic question.

Tracy Alloway (0:44)

But they should have solved it by now.

Joe Weisenthal (0:45)

Yeah, solve that and move on. Seriously, get the answer already. Where does consciousness come from? Then let's move on. I said, they're still arguing these, what to my mind seem like very basic questions in philosophy. They're like, ask all the same stuff that they've been talking about forever. How to be a good person? What does it mean to have a moral way of life? Where does consciousness come from? Why do we have moral intuitions, et cetera? It's like, move on, get the answer.

Tracy Alloway (1:11)

Wait, do you want them to move on or get the answer?

Joe Weisenthal (1:14)

Get the answer so that you can move on.

Tracy Alloway (1:16)

Move on to what? Those are the questions, Joe.

Joe Weisenthal (1:19)

I know. Move on. Answer the questions already. It's like, if scientists were still debating the speed of gravity or the speed of light, they answered these questions and they moved on and are doing more advanced things.

Tracy Alloway (1:30)

Figure out the foundational elements of what it means to be human so that we can move on to more important things?

Joe Weisenthal (1:35)

Yes, or wrap it up as a field if after 2,000 years of the existence of philosophy, they're still working on these things. Come on.

Tracy Alloway (1:43)

I have a sneaking suspicion that we're going to be asking some of these questions for a very long time, Joe, despite your frustration.

Joe Weisenthal (1:49)

The whole field is fraudulent, is what I'm saying. No, I don't necessarily believe that, but it's like, all right guys, let's move it on. We did that episode several weeks ago with Josh Wolf, the venture capitalist, and he talked about AI, and he threw in there at the end something that had been on my radar, but only barely, he's like, some people are talking about AI rights or AI welfare, as if the same way we talk about animal welfare. I thought to myself, America is such a weird place that this is going to be a huge issue in a few years. I bet this is going to be an enormous topic in the future.

Tracy Alloway (2:22)

I think it absolutely will. I'll say a couple of things. First off, I think when it comes to animal welfare and human welfare, there's still a lot of work to be done on those categories, certainly. But I also think in the meantime, AI rights is going to be a really interesting and potentially important subject. I'm going to sound like a total nerd to you, Joe.

Joe Weisenthal (2:40)

Yeah, yeah, all right.

Tracy Alloway (2:41)

I think I mentioned this before, but I spent a large chunk of my middle school years playing one of the first artificial life games that ever came out, which was creatures. And you raise these little aliens, and you genetically modify them and breed them. And they have feelings, or at least they had a semblance of simulated feelings. And you could see like electrical impulses in their brains and stuff. The game got really weird, because part of it was basically like eugenics and breeding the best alien that you could, which meant that you had to cull some of the existing beings. Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is, I have complicated feelings about AI rights.

Joe Weisenthal (3:21)

Well, let me ask you a question. Do you think those whatever's in the game were conscious? Like, did you think they had feelings?

Tracy Alloway (3:28)

Here's what I would say. Inasmuch as human beings are a system of electrical impulses and chemicals, I could see someone making the argument that this is a computational system full of similar electrical impulses, maybe not chemicals.

Joe Weisenthal (3:45)

Did you feel bad?

Tracy Alloway (3:46)

I felt bad.

Joe Weisenthal (3:47)

Really?

Tracy Alloway (3:47)

Yeah.

Joe Weisenthal (3:48)

When one of the aliens, you had to cull them?