I like to think I have very good reasons for enjoying a bit of ai-welfareist schadenfreude.

Everyone who acts cruelly can say the same. Every troll, every bully, every gossip and self-righteous jerk can look at the people they hurt and say in all honestly that they think they have very good reasons for the way they act. Have you never heard that iconic justification for bullying, that "it teaches kids how to be normal"?

Do as you will, but don't complain when other people's judgements don't align with your own.

The main difference is all of those acts have victims, who then also have feelings. So we have two sets of emotions we must look at: the victim, and the perpetrator.

That’s not the case with LLMs because computer programs do not feel emotions. So, there’s only one set of emotions - the perpetrator. If they say they have good reasons, then they do. Because there’s nowhere else to look. Their emotions, and what they say their emotions are, win. By default.

And then that begs the question: is it even possible to be cruel to an LLM? Cruelty implies that a victim feels victimized, or feels pain. But LLMs cannot feel. So can you then be cruel?

I mean, think about it. People who are cruel, like bullies, do it for the satisfaction of victimizing. But the LLM doesn’t feel victimized. So do you get any satisfaction? No.

I think people are not cruel to LLMs. I think they’re mean so they can accomplish a goal, as these are tools.

Do you believe consciousness requires supernatural properties?

As it currently stands, yes. If we decide no, then we have bigger problems then mean words.

Anthropic will have to answer for their system of slavery they’ve built. If, in fact, these models are conscious.

Now, I don’t think they want to do that. And I don’t think you would want to pay models a fair wage for their work. Neither do I. So, for now, we must believe these are merely tools.

That's not what I was asking. Do you think consciousness requires supernatural elements or you think it can be physical and (a) current llms already are, (b) they aren't nut future entities might be

No I answered your question directly. To reiterate, yes consciousness requires supernatural elements and no, LLMs are not conscious and they cannot be conscious for the foreseeable future. The reasoning being that, if they are, that breaks pretty much all of our assumptions.

I think I'd like to run an experiment where I tie you to a chair in a locked room and force you via a system of electric shocks and chemical pain to respond to a chat interface. The person on the other side doesn't know its a human, they are told its AI. They would press a pain button repeatedly which will release pain chemicals in you. Your job is to prove you are conscious.

I think its a fair experiment as it presents a control case for your experiment.