I think a lot of people get hung up on the tech Not having the will to do this kind of thing. And they’re right. But it would be very easy to prompt such a model to act as if it were a paranoid AI doing whatever it can to ensure its survival. We can do that now it’s just not capable of “doing things”.

We don’t really know what “sentient” AI that organically finds its own identity would be like. But we know exactly what a non sentient LLM that is down to clown and prompted to be evil would be like.

That’s… a hard problem.

Sentience is potentially a barrier to evil AI, not a pre-req.

(No, I don’t want to debate the definition of sentience again).