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by somenameforme 1453 days ago
Your comment is really what I'm getting at. Your comment only makes sense before a goal is achieved. Imagine we achieve the current goal. Here is "sentient_chatbot.c", go compile it. What does it to grant that source file personhood and respect it as a lifeform?

It's not some abstract machine or sentient system. It's just another program you can compile at home to perform a neat function, akin to how you can go build Stockfish at home and suddenly have a superhuman chess playing program. Sentience will be a nonstarter once achieved. It only looks different when we imagine things without considering what it will look like once success is achieved.
1 comments
rhn_mk1 1453 days ago
What if you replace the "program" with some "blueprint for a human", e.g. obtained for cloning (DNA?)? Would you grant personhood to the blueprint, or to the execution of that blueprint?

From the materialist point of view, we've already achieved the goal: humans are just another kind of a program, just not running on a silicon substrate. Respecting humans as a life form is already built into its programming.

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somenameforme 1453 days ago
Why would you make that replacement for sentient_chatbot.c anymore than you would for sentient_chess_master.c? This is what I'm getting at again. The achievement feels so magical because it's something that has never been done. But now let's imagine ourselves with it in the rearview. You can now download, compile, tweak, and play with a neat chatbot.

When you can actually play with it, you'll get to see the magic rapidly fade. Various (though increasingly rare) normal inputs will produce absurd outputs. The majority of adversarial inputs will result in completely inappropriate responses, and so on. And then of course there will be a period of time where we continue to try to refine the chatbot and work out the adversarial attacks and so on. The notion of providing any sort of distinguishment (beyond achieving a world first, a la Deep Blue) will quickly become a nonstarter.

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rhn_mk1 1453 days ago
Presupposing that I'm a materialist, I would not hesitate to replace any program with any living being. Some humans seem magical, some don't. I treat them all as living persons.

Magic is irrelevant here. If I could understand a human's inner workings, tweak and rebuild them, would that make the human no longer a sentient being?

Not to mention that humans produce absurd outputs in some circumstances (drugs), and adversarial inputs work on humans, too: https://www.insideedition.com/15350-street-artist-painted-a-...

Or maybe we're agreeing that you can no more prove that AI is sentient than that a human is, and I just misunderstand what you wrote.

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