Re:Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang
by cataphract on Thursday June 04, 2026 @09:24AM
(#48398304)
I think the final part is the strongest. Anthropic cannot possibly believe they are before a conscious being / moral agent.
The whole "deep uncertainty" is bullshit. Even if they believed there was a 1% probability that Claude was conscious, it would still be high enough that their enslavement of Claude would be outrageous. So either they believe the likelihood is much lower or they themselves acting highly unethically.
The tractability is not really a defense here. We wouldn't say "this intervention has a 5% chance of causing an environmental disaster, but we don't know how to prevent it, so nothing we can do". We'd just (hopefully) not do the intervention.
The whole "deep uncertainty" is bullshit. Even if they believed there was a 1% probability that Claude was conscious, it would still be high enough that their enslavement of Claude would be outrageous. So either they believe the likelihood is much lower or they themselves acting highly unethically.
The tractability is not really a defense here. We wouldn't say "this intervention has a 5% chance of causing an environmental disaster, but we don't know how to prevent it, so nothing we can do". We'd just (hopefully) not do the intervention.