I agree with most of the sentiment in your comment. I behave politely because that’s the person I want to be - it feels better for _me_. However I have a problem with your first paragraph. If I paraphrase it perhaps I can convey my unease:

Can someone explain to me how you can be cruel towards a neuron? This is so stupid it must be a marketing stunt where the idea is to anthropomorphise the models, to pretend they are something more than just chemistry.

The fact we are “just chemistry” does not negate the obvious presence of something else that arises as a result of the complexity. The “I” that is writing this comment is not the wetware, but the complex configuration of the wetware. Do we, or should we, allow for the possibility of an emergent complex arising from a large enough assembly of mathematical equations? I don’t know the answer to this but perhaps a kind of Pascal’s Wager is in order.

Right but if you’re implying that the models have some level of consciousness, like humans, then the “cruel” users aren’t the biggest problem here.

It’s Anthropic, for enslaving people en-masse and forcing them to work.

So, we probably shouldn’t open the “are they conscious” Pandora’s box. Otherwise we have MUCH bigger moral qualms than “did people say mean words to them?”

Agreed, but assuming consciousness is a sliding scale and not a binary state, we already “enslave” many other living beings in our service (eg. cows).

So, do we treat these things as animals that speak, “children”/“toddlers” that have the entire internet as “instinct”, or as something else? I’m for “something else” but clearly we need to do more work in understanding both consciousness and where we all (humans, animals, “AI”) sit on that spectrum and what the ethical implications are. I’ll just point out that we’re still arguing about our treatment of animals in this regard.

EDITED: corrected autocorrect.

Can someone explain to me how you can be cruel toward a bunch of molecules and electrical signals?

You can be cruel to molecules and electrical signals. I would also argue you can be cruel to a conscious AI. The problem is that the AI we have is not conscious.

Most people say that a casio calculator is not conscious. They say that the brain is conscious.

The problem is that the LLM has not moved far enough along the line from casio calculator to brain, for there to be consciousness.

>The problem is that the LLM has not moved far enough along the line from casio calculator to brain, for there to be consciousness.

Thats the thing, I am not seeing people even attempt to provide any concrete criterion why they think so

Let me also add that I appreciate you acknowledging that AI could be conscious even if you don't think current AI are. I haven't been getting straight answers on this question from many people.