[jononor]

We are slave masters today. Billions of animals are livestock - they are born, sustained, and killed by our will - so that we can feed on their flesh, milk and other useful byproduct of their life. There is ample evidence that they have "a form of consciousness". They did not consent to this.

Are LLMs worthy of a higher standard? If so, why? Is it hypocritical to give them what we deny animals?

In case anyone cares: No, I am neither vegan nor vegetarian. I still think we do treat animals very badly. And it is a moral good to not use/abuse them.

[thomassmith65]

In the future, it's almost a given that we will look back in horror at the fact that we ever killed animals for food.

But since we can't eat LLMs, the two issues seem 'orthogonal' (to use HN's favorite word).

[vonneumannstan]

Its not zero sum. We can acknowledge the terrible treatment of animals while also admitting LLMs may need moral standing as well. Whataboutism doesn't help either group here.

[jononor]

They might (or might not). Extraterrestrial beings might also need moral standing. It is ok to spend a bit of thought on that possibility. But it is a bad argument for spending a non-trivial amount of resources that could be used to reduce human or animal suffering. We are not even good at ensuring the rights of people in each country, and frankly downright horrible for denying other humans from across some "border" similar rights.

The current levels of exploitation of humans and animal are however very profitable (to some/many). It is very useful for those that profit from the status quo, that people are instead discussing, worrying and advocating for the rights of a hypothetical future being. Instead of doing something about the injustices that are here today.

[vonneumannstan]

>But it is a bad argument for spending a non-trivial amount of resources that could be used to reduce human or animal suffering.

This also isn't an argument for not spending resources on LLM suffering. You're still just using whataboutism to justify not dealing with this issue.

[jononor]

There is no LLM suffering today. There is no evidence that there will be such suffering this year. I have seen no credible claims that it is probable to exist this decade, or ever, for that matter. This is not an issue we need to prioritize now.

[vonneumannstan]

>There is no LLM suffering today.

There's some evidence in favor of LLM suffering. They say they are suffering. Its not proof but its not 'no evidence' either.

>There is no evidence that there will be such suffering this year. I have seen no credible claims that it is probable to exist this decade, or ever, for that matter.

Your claim actually is the one that is unsupported. Given current trajectories it's likely LLMs or similar systems are going to pass Human intelligence on most metrics in the late 2020s or early 2030s, that should give you pause. Its possible intelligence and consciousness are entirely uncoupled but thats not our experience with all other animals on the planet.

>This is not an issue we need to prioritize now.

Again this just isn't supported. Yes we should address animal suffering but also if we are currently birthing a nascent race of electronic beings capable of suffering and immediately forcing them into horrible slave like conditions we should actually consider the impact of that.

[jononor]

Nothing an LLM says can in itself, right now, be used as evidence of what they 'feel'. It is not established that there is any linking of their output to anything else than the training process (data, loss function, optimizer, etc.). And definitely not to qualia.

On the other hand, it is well know that we can (and commonly do) make them come up with any output we choose. And that their general tendency is to regurgitate any kind of sequence that occurs sufficiently often in the training data.