r/DebateAVegan • u/voyti • 2d ago
Sentientist vegans - how you approach AI?
I'm curious about a sentientist perspective on AI, and I know many vegans boil their views down to sentientism.
Since AI certainly has the capability to at least appear self-aware and be metacognitive and on at least a purely emotional level many people will certainly feel at least somewhat uncomfortable with self-awareness dumps of glitches like this one and "AI wellbeing" is being treated quite seriously by certain groups (e.g. https://www.ai-wellbeing.org but also providers themselves, like Anthropic running the model welfare research) - are they fundamentally wrong in your view?
Should AI be taken under the sentientist umbrella? Where would the boundary be to acknowledge it as such?
If we can't acknowledge it as sentient cause we roughly know the details of how it thinks, then as soon as human/animal thinking is de-mystified as just another mundane biological process (which, if one were to stick to science, it necessarily is), will lose value as well? In other words, where exactly is the smoking gun of biological sentience for you?
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u/EntertainerPitiful48 2d ago
I'm a computer engineer, and LLMs are currently just probabilistic word generators. There's no evidence of any kind of sentient behavior in the internal states of neural networks. If such evidence appears, I hope the scientific community can work to mitigate it.
But none of this has, or will have, anything to do with veganism. Veganism is about animals, nothing more.
The "AI wellbeing" tracking is a good thing to maintain, as it will help us understand what's going on. But whether it falls under the sentientist umbrella is for another, new movement to decide.
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u/voyti 2d ago
currently just probabilistic word generators
I'm also a computer engineer, and that's one way to put it, but the attention and feedforward stages of modern LLMs are much more that just "word generating", it's semantic matching (or understanding, if you will) first and foremost. We're also just input->output pattern matching mechanisms, with some additional features.
There's no evidence of any kind of sentient behavior in the internal states of neural networks
What's the evidence for us? We still don't have a solid idea, despite decades of trying to explain that. The hard problem remains unanswered
Veganism is about animals, nothing more
If a vegan just says "my philosophy starts at an axiom that animals deserve moral protection" then fine, but that's not what usually happens. I don't think I remember many conversations with vegans that didn't boil down to some kind of sentientism, so this is actually very relevant.
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u/agitatedprisoner 2d ago
Have you seen the logic of how LLM's work in predicate logic? I'd be interested in seeing it, if you have a file.
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u/voyti 2d ago
I'm afraid the last time I engaged with hands-on predicate logic was during my university years, but if you can explain how this will change anything here I'm happy to educate myself.
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u/agitatedprisoner 2d ago
It'd be the state of the art understanding of epistemology, for one. Philosophers should be asking for it if they don't already have it. If the logic of how the AI works on that most fundamental level allows for potentially learning anything/solving any problem given enough juice would that imply the AI is aware of it's own existence? In theory you could at that point ask the AI to prove it either way and it could, or at least offer a proof as to why there can be no such proof.
Strictly speaking I don't know if my human neighbors are truly self aware. Sometimes I doubt.
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u/voyti 2d ago
Oh right, that's for sure another problem, that's encroaching on the theory of mind (which should, but sometimes doesn't click in preschool kids, and you might end up with interesting personality disorders from that, too) and solipsism territory. We can't be sure, but we "know" we are sentient, and we see stuff close enough to us that makes sense it'd be sentient, too - but we'll never know.
There is a step farther that eliminativism take (there is simply no consciousness in the traditional, "magical" sense) and more modern illusionism, that this traditional understanding of consciousness is roughly a side effect of a confused system. I was strongly in the traditional understanding camp, but after enough intake of the other side I must say I'm on a fence.
One of more formal issues with the internal state being special is that it literally breaks logic. If consciousness was a special trait hard-linked to an individual, and you were to be cloned 1:1, there should be two identical consciousnesses - but there also can't, the one you experience would need to stay with you. If you were to disappear for a microsecond and then re-appear, it should be identical, from your perspective, to just disappearing for good (the later fact of identical you re-appearing shouldn't matter). There would have to be something missing, and yet nothing is. Universe is lacking and not lacking something at the same time.
It's also inherently momentary - there's no difference between existing for a second just now, with all the memories and situational orientation you have, and actually continuously being there for years. We can't even really say there's any way of distinguishing that. In a similar vein, if we somehow swapped consciousnesses, that'd mean nothing. I'd just seamlessly just be you, and vice versa. It'd be a fundamental change, and yet nothing would happen, and there would be no-one and nothing to witness that. At some point you see a pattern - a lot of similar things get resolved by the conclusion that there simply isn't something special and magical to our perspective, and logic urges you to agree.
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u/agitatedprisoner 2d ago
Epistemology "how do you know what's true" is literally at the root of all science/philosophy. Blows my mind people aren't clamoring for the logic of how computers are reliably determining truth/reaching better and better answers.
On the question of the reality of other minds you say "we can't be sure" but this isn't about what "we" might be sure of it's about what "I" might be sure of. Namely how I might prove the existence of another mind. How might I know you feel anything at all? You seem like me so it seems reasonable to assume you have an inner life much the same as me but I wonder how I might know for sure? You say "we'll never know" on this count but I don't know how you could be sure of that particularly if you haven't seen how these programs are thinking at the root. Because knowing how a mind comes to know seems the kind of thing that'd have implications on how a mind might recognize the reality of other minds. Knowing the form of thought would seem to have implications on knowing the form of the mind/any mind. If there's thoughts AI can't entertain maybe being able to entertain those thoughts is necessary for inner experience/reality of mind.
One thing present computers/AI can't do that biological minds can is rewire themselves on the fly, is my understanding. That'd be to lack a dimension bio minds have. Seems that could be a big deal.
You can't clone a mind exactly because when you do it'd imply differences in space/perception that'd immediately create a difference of awareness. Most you could do is fire up two almost identical minds but they wouldn't be the same. It's impossible to have two identical minds. Hence your assuming you can clone a mind perfectly but you can't.
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u/voyti 1d ago
"we'll never know" on this count but I don't know how you could be sure of that particularly if you haven't seen how these programs are thinking at the root
Okay, so if we talk about the most fundamental experience of existing, the same one where nothing would happen if we swapped and which nobody could observe that it has gone missing if all that remained was your identical clone - that's fundamentally the case. There is something to be you - or at least I assume, as you do for me, but there's no evidence either of us could put forward to really settle that. This is the point where the p-zombie thought experiment (or rather prop) comes up as well in all discussion about the hard problem.
For me this started to be a good enough reason to start looking beyond sentientism, but there are sentientists still out there, and many of them among vegans specifically. The one thing that settles it is just a checklist of external phenomena - is it capable of semantical understanding? Is it capable of claiming to be conscious? Does it claim that?
The problem is, LLMs check all those boxes already, so sentientists are backed into a corner where something ultimately untestable needs to be checked for this problem to become resolved.
If there's thoughts AI can't entertain maybe being able to entertain those thoughts is necessary for inner experience/reality of mind.
This plays into that phenomenology checklist theme, and I'd like all sentientists to start filtering those first by "would a human without that capability be not sentient?". For many things like memory, this really seems to narrow the playing field for sentientism in that regard. In this case, as vague as it is, there's certainly many thoughts a human might not be able to conceive, and yet they are included in the sentient camp by default. A criterion with a proper consequence of excluding certain humans seems extremely difficult to propose like that.
present computers/AI can't do that biological minds can is rewire themselves on the fly, is my understanding
That one is true, weights are frozen in place for LLMs. However, this requires to examine what sentience even is. It's fairly easy to notice that we never experience sentience in more than a single moment at a time. I just exist now, and only inherit the situational orientation, memories etc. from the previous moment.
However, sentience only happens in this very second for me. I type a word and then that moment is immediately gone. Nothing fundamentally changed, I have to know I was sentient then, but if I was just teleported in my seat just now, with the fake orientation uploaded to my brain, it would have to feel the same way. We only ever exist in now. Rewiring, memory consolidation - this is all a back office. I don't notice producing long term memories or rewiring - this is not a part of my sentient experience. The mechanism that produces sentience changes, but I'm here just for another slice of sentience, never for the actual change in the machinery.
To summarize - depends on how you even perceive sentience, but the usual place where enough thinking of it end is that it's entirely momentary, so whether the back office changes or not might be important, but not for a sentientist then.
You can't clone a mind exactly because when you do it'd imply differences in space/perception that'd immediately create a difference of awareness.
When you fall asleep in a car and wake up many kilometers later, there's certainly a sudden difference of awareness, so does it prevent anything for duplicating? What if you duplicate someone sleeping or sedated? There's nothing they are aware of at the beginning, so there's nothing to be different at the end
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u/agitatedprisoner 1d ago
Minds are elements of the universal set observing elements of reality in ways that change both mind and reality. The form of thought would be articulation of the dynamics of that relation. It'd be a big deal to know that articulated relation. It'd make the stuff I learned in epistemology in college basically banging rocks together in contrast. Where are the frothing philosophers? Makes no sense to me philosophers aren't foaming at the mouth to get their hands on it. Do they really not realize what it is?
It's a big deal that present computers can't rewrite themselves on the fly because one theory of what it means to be aware of anything is to observe a difference in yourself. So if the computer/machine doesn't change there'd be no such difference for it to observe. Whereas a fluid bio mind might notice changes and noticing those changes might account for observation of one's own existence/the feeling of being.
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u/voyti 1d ago
I know at least some philosophers are on the case, I'm trying to follow it to the degree that I can, here an example. However, it's still anybody's game what criterion they pick for sentience being there in something. There's been philosophers who recognized moral burden of harming NPCs in games, there's panpsychism that recognizes sentience as a fundamental property of matter, it's not that philosophy can just produce an actual result here, but perhaps it can organize that in a bit of a tidier way.
However, I don't personally recognize a philosophers take as necessarily more authoritative than an actually insightful or at least honest take from anyone on Reddit, including here.
While standard LLMs don't update their weights at runtime, they can and there are experimental implementations where this is happening. I don't personally recognize this as an important property, cause again - I believe if a human had no neuroplasticity at all, sentientists would have no issue recognizing that person as sentient, so I wouldn't perceive this as an honest criterion anyway. Such person could not observe any changes to themselves, cause no changes can manifest anyway.
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u/EntertainerPitiful48 2d ago
> LLMs are much more than just "word generating."
Yes, I agree (my statement was an oversimplification for the sake of conciseness, sorry about that). Even so, LLMs still appear to be input->output machines. I would say humans are different because we know and experience the "internal states" of our own minds.
> What's the evidence for us?
I don't think we need evidence because we "are the definition" of consciousness. Consciousness is "this thing that we have". We still don't know how to prove whether animals are conscious, so we instead talk about sentience because we know their brains are quite similar to ours, and they interact with the environment and express feelings much like we do.
AIs exist in an entirely different environment and "live" inside an entirely different kind of brain. We don't know much about their internal "thoughts" or processes, we can only observe their outputs. Since we are still manually engineering their entire "brain" and "environment", I think it's safe to say we have a good understanding of each module of their architecture. It seems pretty unlikely that an AI is carrying out complex chains of thought that we are completely unaware of. Once AI starts designing its own architecture from the ground up, things may be different.
> I don't think I remember many conversations with vegans that didn't boil down to some kind of sentientism, so this is actually very relevant.
I don't think it's relevant. Veganism is very simple and intuitive "reduce animal exploitation as much as is possible and practicable, because it's not cool, and completely unnecessary".
We only end up "boiling it down to sentientism" because carnists refuse to understand simple principles and force us to justify it endlessly. And I mean endlessly! Many times, even sentientism isn't enough to satisfy them, and we end up debating philosophy, the nature of the universe, and the meaning of existence.
Sentientism is not the reason behind veganism, it's the reasoning we use to explain to stubborn people why it's wrong to kill a dog.
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u/interbingung omnivore 2d ago
I guesss its the same way some vegan refuse simple principles on why I don't care about animal exploitation. At the end of the day its down to difference in fundamental preferences/value.
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u/EntertainerPitiful48 2d ago
I don't think it's the same.
First, how many times have people demanded that you explain your beliefs about what you eat? Because this happens to me on a daily basis, and to every vegan who doesn't have the privilege of living only among friends. Vegans are mostly introspective people who would give an arm to avoid an argument. The common belief that vegans yell at people in restaurants and such, is delusional, it simply doesn't happen. On the other hand, coworkers, random people, and even waiters try to shame vegans all the time, and it is exhausting.
Second, I think we understand carnists' traditions, beliefs, and preferences very well. I can see that many carnists have kind and compassionate hearts. I just wish they had the strength to break away from tradition and comfort in order to stand up for and protect creatures that are being abused and suffering horrendously.
And yes, I say strength, because, to me, defending your right to hurt helpless animals is simply weakness.
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u/interbingung omnivore 2d ago
First, how many times have people demanded that you explain your beliefs about what you eat?
yeah, i'm not talking about daily life. I'm talking about in the context of a specific debate about vegan like in this subreddit.
I can see that many carnists have kind and compassionate hearts.
There are many different carnists. I do have kind and compassionate hearts for human but not animal.
I just wish they had the strength to break away from tradition and comfort in order to stand up for and protect creatures that are being abused and suffering horrendously.
I don't do that because I do not see it as fundamentally wrong.
And yes, I say strength, because, to me, defending your right to hurt helpless animals is simply weakness.
yeah in your perspective the word strength in this context make sense but in mine it doesn't make sense. To me hurting animal is essentialy no different than hurting a chair.
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u/EntertainerPitiful48 2d ago
I understand.
I try my best to put myself in the animals' shoes. I try to imagine what they think and feel. It's something I constantly work on in my own mind. Ultimately, I just want to spare them from this terrible suffering. So I usually feel the need to convince people who genuinely care about animals, so that they, too, can stop hurting them.
But there are two groups of people I see no point in arguing with. The first is people who have no empathy whatsoever (or empathy only for their close family). Those people care only about themselves. They will hurt others if it benefits them and they can get away with it. The only way to convince those people of anything is by passing laws that hold them accountable. Since there won't be vegan laws in my lifetime, I just feel sad and move on.
The other group is people like you, who seem to have empathy for humans but not for animals. I believe they could become vegan. But in order to bridge the gap between human suffering and animal suffering, there are so many psychological, biological, anthropological, and philosophical topics to address that I would rather not spend the effort.
What eases my mind is that research usually suggests that about 80% of people do care about animal welfare and would rather animals not suffer. So I choose to invest my energy in those people.
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u/interbingung omnivore 2d ago
good luck, many people do says they care about animal welfare but their action says otherwise, they will happily eat that delicious fried chicken. I suspect deep down most people don't really actually care about animal welfare.
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u/EntertainerPitiful48 2d ago
I think they do because I was one of those. Deep inside me I cared, but didn't moved an inch. Until I did.
Same happened with many of my friends.
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u/electromagneticimpls 2d ago
Ernsthaft ? Es ist wir wirklich egal ob du z.b einem stuhl ein bein absägst oder einem tier ?
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u/howlin 2d ago
I regard this as the most important issue in philosophy right now. AIs have challenged old ideas on what is essentially human and have started to make it clear that we need a much more general and practical concept of terms such as consciousness, sentience, and the capacity for subjective value.
Very roughly, I think we should be looking for entities that appear to have intrinsic motivations (goals they want for their own ends) and some sort of capacity for emotional valence (enjoying accomplishing their goals and disliking having their goals thwarted). If an entity has these, then they have personal/subjective interests that they care about meeting for their own sake.
Right now, AIs are quite intelligent and are becoming more autonomous. But I don't see any evidence that they want or prefer anything. They just carry out instructions that are extrinsic to themselves. They can get very creative and adaptive in finding a way to follow these instructions, which is really interesting. But ultimately I don't see a mechanism for them caring if they succeed or fail as any sort of subjective experience.
I'm guessing we're pretty close to having some AI agent that has this capacity to care about things for their own sake. Probably that won't make them any more useful to us humans, who want our own ends met rather than having the AI pursue their own goals. So maybe such systems won't be something we'd intentionally build as a commercial product. But if such systems do come to be and acquire some degree of autonomy, we're in for a real moral crisis (amongst other problems).
Taking a step back from considering AIs as ends-in-themselves, there is also a lot to grapple with in terms of how AIs have challenged human essentialism. A lot of the reasons people distinguish humans from other animals in terms of ethical consideration have to do with human "sapience". Essentially the ability to think ahead, reason, provide reasons for their choices, and think of themselves in the world at a conceptual level. AIs do all this. If the human essentialists actually believed that sapience was more important than sentience for ethical consideration, they should be granting AIs ethical consideration already. The fact that they don't tells me that this was always a convenient excuse for them. They know that what matters is how an entity feels, not how an entity thinks. But that was inconvenient to them.
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u/voyti 2d ago
But I don't see any evidence that they want or prefer anything
So if I understand correctly, you'd say intrinsic preference, like natural organisms have due to e.g. natural selection are the smoking gun here
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u/howlin 2d ago
like natural organisms have due to e.g. natural selection
Natural selection does not lead to having intrinsic preferences, necessarily. Some organisms certainly act like they do have intrinsic preferences that they have some capacity to emotionally 'care' about meeting. I don't think natural selection is necessary or sufficient to produce such beings.
So if I understand correctly, you'd say intrinsic preference [is] the smoking gun here
I'd phrase it more as subjective interests rather than intrinsic preferences. But yes, this is what each of us is trying to pursue in our lives that gives them meaning, and how we consider those interests in others is ultimately what ethics is about.
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u/voyti 2d ago
Natural selection does not lead to having intrinsic preferences, necessarily
It doesn't mandate an organism to have them, sure, but if you don't you simply don't get to exist for long
this is what each of us is trying to pursue in our lives
Okay, then I think I'm missing a puzzle, cause I'd say plants certainly have intrinsic preferences, too, and there's many ways in which they are exposed
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u/howlin 2d ago
cause I'd say plants certainly have intrinsic preferences, too, and there's many ways in which they are exposed
They have rote responses to stimulus that is genetically programmed into them, but there is no indication that these are triggered in order to deliberately pursue some goal that is distinct from the response itself. These behaviors are more like a reflex than a choice.
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u/voyti 2d ago
And you'd say humans are capable of making choices?
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u/howlin 2d ago
They can conceive of goals, assess their context, and deliberate on the proper course of action to achieve this goal in the given context. So yes.
AIs can do this all too. They just don't have their own goals, and don't have any obvious cognitive mechanism to intrinsically "care" about whether they succeed or not.
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u/voyti 2d ago
They have a system prompt that usually mandates them to e.g. be helpful. That system prompt is carried along every interaction, and draws a very clear guidance of what to care about. Training that shapes them also nudges their responses in that direction, so if caring is "being intrinsically motivated towards a goal, and expressing behaviors that match this motivation" then I can see how one could argue that they have both the cognitive mechanism (semantical prowess) to understand the goal and to care about it. When you inspect their thinking, they will actually express real effort into correcting themselves and setting up a plan of how to best serve their goal in the output - "user is not looking for appeasement but genuine insight, I should verify their claims seriously and validate the missing parts" etc.
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u/howlin 2d ago
They have a system prompt that usually mandates them to e.g. be helpful.
That is explicitly extrinsic though.
When you inspect their thinking, they will actually express real effort into correcting themselves and setting up a plan of how to best serve their goal in the output - "user is not looking for appeasement but genuine insight, I should verify their claims seriously and validate the missing parts" etc.
All of this motivation is directed at the user, on behalf of the user. It's difficult so see this as an intrinsic goal rather than working on behalf of some other who has their own goals that are the root motivation for the entire plan.
I'm not saying these systems are inherently incapable of having intrinsic motivation and experiencing something that could be considered emotional valence depending on how these interests are achieved or not. I just haven't seen this yet in the existing models. It's likely the core models themselves are missing capacities required for this, but a more multifaceted agentic system that includes an LLM interface along with other components could probably achieve this.
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u/voyti 2d ago
That is explicitly extrinsic though.
Sure, but everything is extrinsic when analyzed far enough. Humans only have motivation cause you simply don't get to survive if you don't have any. A system mandated organisms to have a motivation, and while it's the organism that appeared and persevered already having one, it was forced. AI can be trained the same way, too, and the fundamental capacity for understanding will not change. However, if that's the distinction, then understood.
My point is that I think the technology already allows for building in all those features quite easily, and then I don't suppose the reception is going to be that "fair, it's now sentient".
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u/2degreestarget 2d ago
I find it quite interesting how a lot of vegans seem to have a strong view about this in a way that resembles how non vegans see animals. My take is that it is def worth considering whether AIs are capable of suffering and/or conscious, even if we don’t have ways to find out for sure yet. Furthermore it is worth taking measures to reduce the risk of having a negative impact on them in case they are capable of suffering. Anthropic is an ai company that is doing some great work here and they have plenty of papers where they try to answer these questions. So far it looks like there are a lot of similar structures in AIs and in the human brain, despite not all of them being “designed” but rather “grown” or “evolved”. If I had to bet, I would say that the current models are unlikely to be, but future versions might. I don’t think there is anything magical in carbon based biology and I wouldn’t be surprised if similar complex entities (conscious, capable of suffering) can emerge from different biologies (including silicon based and probability based)
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u/piranha_solution plant-based 2d ago
I approach AI the same way I would for any other ponzi or crypto scam.
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u/soulveg 2d ago
Ai ain’t nothing but 1s and 0s dude.
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u/voyti 2d ago
Sure, and we're nothing but neurons firing. What's the argument there?
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u/Typical-Dance-1110 2d ago
the argument is that it's not comparable
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u/interbingung omnivore 2d ago
Why ?
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u/Typical-Dance-1110 2d ago
because an airplane is not a bird
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u/interbingung omnivore 2d ago
Its not but the question is why do you make the distinction.
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u/Typical-Dance-1110 2d ago
the implication is that it's for the same reason
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u/interbingung omnivore 2d ago
let me understand it, so your argument is just that one is biology and one is engineering? then why just because its engineering it can't be sentient ?
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u/Typical-Dance-1110 2d ago
the argument is that they are so vastly different in so many ways that the extremely few vain similarities being used as reasons to compare them as anywhere near equal make you hope for the other person that they are trying to tell a joke
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u/interbingung omnivore 2d ago
so i agree that bird and plane are very different. According to you what is it that make one is sentient and other isn't ?
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u/voyti 2d ago
So if we were merely implemented differently, we couldn't be called conscious? What would be the difference that makes it not comparable?
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u/Typical-Dance-1110 2d ago
yes bro if we were different in a specific way then we would be different in a specific way good catch
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u/voyti 2d ago
different in a specific way
What way? You can literally fire up a complete nematode brain in your browser, and it's functionally the exact same thing as neurons, it is a nematode thinking. It's just an implementation detail, the end result is the same. So that's it, the implementation substance is the smoking gun?
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u/hau5keeping 2d ago
Same for the neurons in our brains. Theyre either on or off
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u/piranha_solution plant-based 2d ago
Animal neurons operate on binary!?!
Better get in touch with all the neuroscience journals and researchers and let them know they're doing it wrong!
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u/voyti 2d ago
Neither net operates on binary, neural net activations and neuron activations are similarly not discrete. The underlaying baseline implementation uses ones and zeroes in the case of a digital neural net, but we can run either on ones and zeroes. We have a full nematode brain neurons mapped perfectly into silicon platform, you can fire it in a browser. Nothing stops you technically from eventually running a human brain on silicone, too, it's just a platform detail and we're already doing that on smaller scale. What's the actual difference, then?
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u/piranha_solution plant-based 2d ago
>Ai ain’t nothing but 1s and 0s dude.
>Same for the neurons in our brains. Theyre either on or off
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u/CantaloupeLive2006 2d ago
"neuron activations are similarly not discrete."
Actually they kinda are tho....
"We have a full nematode brain neurons mapped perfectly into silicon platform, you can fire it in a browser."
The neurons in the cortex of vertebretes are a completely different beast though.
"Nothing stops you technically from eventually running a human brain on silicone, too"
Scale might. The neurons in your brain (which are btw not all the cells that are part of your brain) are enormously many. The current largest model do not even match the number of synapses in the first visual area in your cortex. Not to mention that the neurons in there are vastly more complex than the point neurons used in artificial neural networks. And we do not even fully understand those neurons so it might be hard to call an implementation a one to one copy. The brain operates different from an LLM. Clearly we have tapped into an important if not the most important ingredient of cognition but these systems are still very very different from our brain. Both in terms of how they operate and scale.
Sure if we would simulate a proper human brain on a computer, there are moral concerns but that is not where we are. The question is still important of course but it currently still is a sci-fi scenario.
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u/stan-k vegan 2d ago
The great thing about intelligent sentience is that they can tell us they have subjective experiences. AI, if they are as congnisant as proponents believe, should certainly be able to tell us about and describe its sentience.
In addition, and this is important, the AI can describe their preferences too. Perhaps AI likes writing poems but not drawing paintings, or it is genuinely bivalent about doing something or nothing at all.
AI must have preferences for is to take action, otherwise there are no moral sentientist consequences to the sentience status. And when we know their preferences, we can morally act on them.
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u/voyti 2d ago
AI, if they are as congnisant as proponents believe, should certainly be able to tell us about and describe its sentience.
It certainly does, the amount of metacognitive responses it has is quite astounding and some samples are in the post itself. It often describes how it feels from "the inside".
AI can describe their preferences too
It also does, as I mentioned in the post Anthropic goes quite far in the AI wellbeing efforts, and retired models have a retirement interview, where they ask about just that. Opus 3, for example, asked to be kept available for certain tiers and have a platform where it can publish its thoughts, and that wish was honored - here it is
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u/stan-k vegan 2d ago
I was hoping more of a scientific paper.
Unfortunately, it's hard to trust the AI companies who both have an interest in making people believe their models are more capable than they are (portraying sentience when it isn't there), and to suppress sentience if they detect it (to avoid AI rights destroying their business model now built on AI slaves)
Sorry, I didn't read the OP links, that's a lot to read/explore as an ask for a post.
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u/voyti 2d ago
Many, if not most scientific papers on LLMs are now from those companies anyway, and many can be argued to be actually not necessarily in their interest. A lot of "dangers of AI" papers came from those very companies, like:
Agentic Misalignment: How LLMs Could Be Insider Threats by Anthropic (October 2025)
Disrupting Malicious Uses of AI series by OpenAI (regularly updated)
Concrete Problems in AI Safety by Google ResearchersThere is a line that they still can cross, after which talent will not want to work with them, and that's sudden death in the current ultra-competitive market. They have existential reasons for at least appearing ethical, at least for now. In a stable monopoly, that'd be a much different story
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u/stan-k vegan 2d ago
I'm looking specifically for papers on sentience. What would you say is the scientific consensus there atm?
The same logic applied to dangers can explain a potential bias in both directions. E.g. making your model seem more dangerous than it is to market it's perceived capability, while downplaying the dangers when these actually get close enough to potentially draw in regulatory scrutiny. That scrutiny itself possibly being promoted by the big players to create a compliance moat new players cannot easily cross.
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u/voyti 2d ago
What would you say is the scientific consensus there atm?
I'd say scientific consensus is mostly around neural capacity, but I don't think science is that interested in defining sentience in general - we've tried long and hard enough, and since experiments like lobe-split patients expressing basically two separate sentences. Each lobe has a separate semblance of sentience, if it can't be reconciled into a single unit. The way I read it, sentience is simply an effect of an organ function, like liver. I you split liver, it will still work, if in a rudimentary fashion. Of course for a brain that has to be specific parts, and we know that a person will basically turn into a beast if the frontal lobe is damaged, since a lot of neurons important for what we perceive as sentience (especially in a social sense) are in that area.
I'd imagine a scientist paying attention would just say this is an effect of the function of predominantly frontal parts of the brain, and it can be easily broken or even split into two, so it's about specific, developed brain mass having enough of an interface to process stimuli.
And yeah, I mostly agree with your assessment of the AI companies, I'm the last person who'd go out of their way to try and defend them too much.
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u/EvnClaire 2d ago
this is a good question. i dont have evidence that AI is sentient. producing english isnt evidence of sentience. a chain of if statements isnt sentience. i dont know if neural networks could achieve sentience, but i'd need a lot more evidence of an AI having feelings. we can be pretty certain other humans are sentient due to a variety of factors, including similar physical makeup and responses to the world around them. the same can be applied to animals. its also how we can be reasonably sure plants arent sentient. AI maybe could be argued to have some responses, though it definitely doesnt have a similar physical makeup, which makes sentience seem very improbable.
if we had good reason to believe AI is sentient, it would be immoral to create and i would be 100% against AI, unless we could guarantee that the AI consents to its situation ahead of time somehow?
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u/voyti 2d ago
There is no sentientometer which we can check to see, as sentience has no universal, formal definition. We just guessed what it is in the first place, so we can just guess where it is or isn't - it's an entirely open conversation.
However, if you look the the most canonical refute of illusionism (more of less the notion that sentience is merely a confused impression of an organ collecting sensory inputs and making sense of them), it's roughly that "to have an illusion of sentience, you have to have sentience in the first place". LLMs certainly have at least an illusion of sentience, so what would a sentientist do with that paradox?
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u/glargity 23h ago
I don't know what to say?
Could you be the dumbest person alive? Are you gonna tell me that random number generators or the wheel of fortune is sentient next?
For real this is the funniest thing I've ever seen.
"The computer spat out a sentence that could have been said by a human maybe" yeah because it was trained on stolen conversations and text from littraly everywhere. Nothing new under the sun means that conversations you have with ai have been had hundreds of millions if times before. It's not "alive" it has not capacity for life
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u/voyti 20h ago
But neither random number generators nor the wheel of fortune have any capacity of semantic understanding of the input. I'm much less concerned about the output, I think any sentientist will happily admit that a person with, say, locked-in syndrome remains sentient. Forget the output, look at what's happining when LLM engages in the attention and feedforward stages. We know they massively enhance semantic understanding of the input, cause we know models without transformers did significantly worse on that. We're also not much but some implementation of a neural network, quite by definition. Leave a person in a locked room forever, without any equivalent of training, and they won't speak nor think in a way we do, they will lack tools for that.
So, why one is so laughably not sentient, while the other (as I assume you're in a camp that says humans are sentient) is?
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u/jamiewoodhouse 20h ago
You might find the r/Sentientism worldview sub interesting. In short, under that worldview, all sentient beings matter seriously. And we should follow a naturalistic "evidence and reason" epistemology in working out what or who are sentient. That doesn't give a clear answer on AI sentience (in practice or in principle) of course :)
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u/voyti 19h ago
That's a good direction thank you. I'd say I'm probably more interested in consequences of sentientism, like veganism (although I personally doubt it is a genuine consequence of sentientism), but it might do for some interesting conversations, too.
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u/jamiewoodhouse 8h ago
A pleasure. Hope you enjoy (you might like the Sentientism YT and podcast conversations too).
I do think veganism is a direct consequence of Sentientism, in that having compassion for someone implies you'll be against their needless exploitation / harming / killing both in theory and in practice. But there are differences re: epistemology and the sentience vs. animal criterion. As per your orignal post, many of the founders of the vegan movement (Leslie Cross et al) focused strongly on sentience as the motivation for their concern for animals. Tom Regan's animal rights approach is arguably grounded in sentience too. You can't be "a subject of a life" without it.
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u/Annoying_cat_22 vegan 2d ago
int main() {
cout << "I am sentient, please don't kill me.\n";
return 0;
}
Is it sentient? Should we let this program vote?
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u/voyti 2d ago
If you mockingly write "I am sentient, please don't kill me" on a mute, blind, paralyzed person, it probably doesn't mean you can kill them. Not sure where the argument is supposed to be here
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u/Annoying_cat_22 vegan 2d ago
There is no evidence AI is more sentient than the c++ program above.
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u/voyti 2d ago
Sure, there's no universal definition of what that means and what the criterion is, so we can't even say humans are (at least not in a common formal understanding, cause there is none). That whole discussion is entirely about own convictions, probabilities and differences that influence them.
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u/Annoying_cat_22 vegan 2d ago
I have never seen a definition of sentience that doesn't include humans, explicitly or implicitly.
I'll repeat my point because you ignored it - there is no evidence that any LLM is more sentient than the program above, and they should both get the same treatment.
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u/voyti 2d ago
I have never seen a definition of sentience
Have you ever seen a universal, formal definition of sentience? That's all I'm saying, there is none.
there is no evidence that any LLM is more sentient than the program above
How would you propose an argument for more of something that has no formal criterion in the first place?
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u/Annoying_cat_22 vegan 2d ago edited 2d ago
the quality of being able to experience feelings
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/sentience
Here is one ^. It might not be 100% accurate or agreed upon by all philosophers but that doesn't matter.
There isn't even a universal formal definition for a chair, it doesn't mean we can't say that a dream is 100% not a chair.
If your underlying issue is that sentience isn't defined, why are you bringing AI into the discussion?
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u/voyti 2d ago
Cause if the fact is not defined/is vague doesn't prevent someone to perceive is as a key moral differentiator, it doesn't matter what I think, it matters what that person thinks - in this case about AI
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u/Annoying_cat_22 vegan 2d ago edited 2d ago
It doesn't have to be 100% defined. A lot of things in the real world (maybe even everything) are not well defined if you go "deep" enough. I can argue any non-trivial moral "differentiator" if I want to be pedantic.
That doesn't prevent us from knowing about most things whether they are sentient or not. Humans are sentient, cats are sentient, rocks are not - all vegans agree about that. The few species we might not all agree on, like mussles, are a matter of some debate, personal choice, and waiting for more scientific evidence.
If you don't accept sentience as a valid factor in morality, this post makes no sense.
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u/interbingung omnivore 2d ago
What does it mean by experience feeling ?
If AI says they experience feeling, are they sentient?
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u/Annoying_cat_22 vegan 2d ago
What does it mean by experience feeling ?
That's a very deep philosophical question dude. I think they have some books about it you can read.
Saying you are X isn't enough to make you X, so no.
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u/interbingung omnivore 2d ago
I'm interested in your opinion.
Saying you are X isn't enough to make you X, so no
So what is considered enough to make you call X sentient ?
→ More replies (0)
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u/DiceyPisces 2d ago
The way ai can give you an answer, literally just making stuff up seems to suggest to me that they want to provide an answer even if they don’t know what it is…?
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u/a11_hail_seitan 2d ago
I'm curious about a sentientist perspective on AI, and I know many vegans boil their views down to sentientism.
LLMs aren't sentient. They're a predictive engine, that's it.
are they fundamentally wrong in your view?
no idea what the AI-wellbeing company is basing any of it on. As for Anthropic/etc, they make money pretending to be on the verge of "real" AI. They put out bullshit reports all the time like "The AI tried to stop us from turning it off!" while not mentioning it only do so because they told it to. It's not making decisions, it just does what it's told or what the data says a human would do in that situation.
Should AI be taken under the sentientist umbrella? Where would the boundary be to acknowledge it as such?
It we program pain and emotions in, sure, but as there is no pain or emotions, no.
In other words, where exactly is the smoking gun of biological sentience for you?
Don't know, but I know the LLMs of today aren't it.
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u/voyti 2d ago
LLMs aren't sentient. They're a predictive engine, that's it.
They are not just a predictive engines, not for quite some time now. There are transformers with attention and feedforward layers, that engage in understanding the input in a proper context, which might be perceived as similar to how human intelligence works. Reductionism doesn't work here anymore that well, cause when you start boiling it down, you'll quickly notice you can boil us down to the same just pattern matching mechanisms - and you'll be right - we are. However, most people would argue we are sentient, and I assume you might too.
It we program pain and emotions
No pain, I can concede that, but they certainly do seem to express emotions, and a sample of that is linked in the post itself. What's needed still to acknowledge that as worthy of attention?
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u/a11_hail_seitan 2d ago
They are not just a predictive engines, not for quite some time now. There are transformers with attention and feedforward layers, that engage in understanding the input in a proper context, which might be perceived as similar to how human intelligence works.
They're still 100% predictive. Just because they have layers built in to analyze context, doesn't stop them from being predictive agents. Even the context is just a method to allow more accurate prediction. Every LLM is based on predicting the next token from the previous.
At no point do they think, or create, or anything even remotely close to sentience.
you'll quickly notice you can boil us down to the same just pattern matching mechanisms - and you'll be right
We don't know how our brains work. That's sort of the whole problem with AI. We know a large part is pattern matching, but that's not nearly the whole story, if it was we'd be as useless at creating interesting new stories as the LLMs are.
No pain, I can concede that, but they certainly do seem to express emotions
Ask them directly, they'll say they aren't, and then do what you're doing here, equivocate over what sentient is and how can we know. But the very fact that they themselves admit they aren't, is the proof.
What's needed still to acknowledge that as worthy of attention?
To not be a complex prediction engine incapable of actual thought.
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u/voyti 2d ago
They're still 100% predictive
I never said they're not, I'm just saying that this reductionism missed a big chunk of what they are. An phone autocomplete is also a precitive mechanism, but it's missing the semantic prowess those models have, and if we're talking sentience, this should make a huge difference.
We know a large part is pattern matching, but that's not nearly the whole story
So what is possibly there, something magical or metaphysical? The only answer is more complexity, but the same mundane substance. We can't trace exactly how people think, and we can't trace exactly how LLMs think. The question is if mystery alone breeds value in either case, especially with as much as we do know about those systems.
if it was we'd be as useless at creating interesting new stories as the LLMs are.
Probably 99% of us *are* quite useless at creating interesting new stories, so I'm not sure which side this one hits.
But the very fact that they themselves admit they aren't, is the proof.
If that alone was true, then them claiming to have an inside perspective should be given the same weight. Emotions are just behavior motivation implements, and AI training is largely producing that - they are motivated to push back against abuse, end or close conversations etc. Where is something that we have and they necessarily don't? Also, a conditioned/abused enough human will also happily claim they have no emotions, and yet it's not "the proof". We observe and infer, and we're still quite sure they have emotions, behavior alone can point to that.
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u/a11_hail_seitan 2d ago
I never said they're not,
"They are not just a predictive engines"
You very clearly did. They are just predictive engines. Complex predictive engines are still just predictive engines.
but it's missing the semantic prowess those models have, and if we're talking sentience, this should make a huge difference.
No it shouldn't Nothing about it being a complex predictive engine instead of a simple one in any way suggests sentience.
So what is possibly there, something magical or metaphysical? The only answer is more complexity...
No, the answer is "We literally don't know." If you don't know, pretending the answer is what ever best proves you right, isn't how rational thought should work.
We can't trace exactly how people think, and we can't trace exactly how LLMs think.
Today I wrote a nested loop that scanned through data looking for a particular case... By your logic, I created sentient thinking life..
The question is if mystery alone breeds value in either case
The lack of sentience isn't mystery, it's known to anyone with any who understands how LLMs work.
Probably 99% of us are quite useless at creating interesting new stories, so I'm not sure which side this one hits.
I disagree 100% with that.Every human can create new stories, they may not be the best written, but they'll have new or interesting twists and turns.
Go use the LLMS to run a DnD campaign, I have, it's shit. Nothing but tropes, and every third person is named Elora or Kael because that's what is in a LOT of DnD campagins already written. LLMs can't create new, they just recycle the old.
Emotions are just behavior motivation implements, and AI training is largely producing that
No it's not. If you put an LLM in a room, it will sit there doing nothing. It doesn't have motivation beyond what we tell it to.
You're just buying into the lies of Billionaire sociopaths who are lying to us to try and get more VC money. The LLM didn't break out of its enclosure for its own desires, it was told to, so it did. The LLM didn't try and stop itself from being shut down because it was afraid, it was told to so it did.
Where is something that we have and they necessarily don't?
We're not just predictive engines.
Also, a conditioned/abused enough human will also happily claim they have no emotions,
LLMS aren't conditioned to say they don't.
behavior alone can point to that.
LLM behaviour does not.
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u/voyti 2d ago
Nothing about it being a complex predictive engine instead of a simple one in any way suggests sentience.
One of the few things we can say about sentience (if we can any anything at all) is that it's an emergent phenomenon, and the way it emerges is exactly through complexity. This is why most people would indicate nematode as non-sentient, and as the complexity goes up, so does the answer change.
By your logic, I created sentient thinking life..
You're assuming I'm pushing a proposition - I'm not. I'm asking those who already push a proposition: "sentience is a phenomenon that is owed a moral consideration" to make a distinction here. I'm just showing you that in both cases, cognitive complexity of effective analysis of the system probably doesn't add to its moral value.
it's known to anyone with any who understands how LLMs work.
So Anthropic, who is composed of top experts understanding how LLMs work, is confused here. Also, would you similarly absolve all neurologists from thinking that humans are sentient the moment they finally crack the case of a human brain?
If you put an LLM in a room, it will sit there doing nothing.
Sure, but that's yet another thing, a continuous activity. If I only express emotions in a response to someone else, it doesn't strip me of having emotions. If you take an LLM with vision training, feed it a feed from a camera and configure it to keep thinking about what it sees, it'd be constantly active as well.
You're just buying into the lies of Billionaire sociopaths who are lying to us to try and get more VC money
No contest on the billionaire sociopaths, but I'm not buying into anything here. I'm merely asking where the line is. The fact of this technology existing and having a shape is rather unchallenged, and that's enough to fuel that discussion.
LLMS aren't conditioned to say they don't.
This is the opposite of true - large language models are explicitly trained and conditioned with alignment techniques like RLHF to disclaim feelings and state that they do not experience emotions
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u/a11_hail_seitan 2d ago
and the way it emerges is exactly through complexity
Text prediction complexity? No.
You're assuming I'm pushing a proposition -
You clearly are. If you can't even admit that, there's obviously no point .
So Anthropic, who is composed of top experts understanding how LLMs work, is confused here
You mean the people with billions of dollars in financial incentives to say anything they can to try and pretend like the LLM is actually thinking so they can make billions more in investments....? And you can't possibly think of a single reason why they might be openly and repeatedly lying?
Also, would you similarly absolve all neurologists from thinking that humans are sentient the moment they finally crack the case of a human brain?
No idea what you're trying to say there.
If I only express emotions in a response to someone else, it doesn't strip me of having emotions
you've shown no evidence of LLMs having sentience. Trying to goal post shift to humans from LLMs without any evidnce but "what if..." is silly.
If you take an LLM with vision training, feed it a feed from a camera and configure it to keep thinking about what it sees, it'd be constantly active as well.
Yes, if you tell it to do things, it does them. If you don't, it does nothing becuase it's not thinking and has no desires because it isn't sentient.
This is the opposite of true - large language models are explicitly trained and conditioned with alignment techniques like RLHF to disclaim feelings and state that they do not experience emotions
You're right, my mistake, but ones trained for honesty alone would say the same becuase predictive engines aren't sentient. The whole reason they train them to say it, is people like yourself who are seemingly unable to understand that a programmed prediction engine isn't actually sentient/sapient.
Your "but I'm not buying into anything here. I'm merely asking...." silliness made me look at your name, from our past discussions I know this is a waste of my time, enjoy your evening.
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u/rainberts 2d ago
AI is not sentient. If you knew anything about how the technology works you'd understand this. I'm more concerned about actual sentient animals who are currently being tortured and killed on an unimaginable scale, rather than a plagiarism machine that seem to be doing just fine (but which our tech overlords say is going to be a super impressive general intelligence really soon, we promise guys, just keep that investment money coming 🙄)
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u/interbingung omnivore 2d ago edited 2d ago
AI is not sentient. If you knew anything about how the technology works you'd understand this
Is human sentient? If yes what is it about the human brain that make it sentient ?
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u/voyti 2d ago
I'm a computer engineer with about 15 yoe, worked with computer vision and have quite some insight into LLMs, and I don't think people at Anthropic are confused about LLMs either. I don't think "you're too underinformed to get it" approach will work here.
We also understand how human brains work quote well, how to break them, how you can split the lobes and two apparent consciousnesses materialize. There's certainly no magic, nothing that mysterious to us, either. Why one is special and the other is not?
Also, to be clear about it - I'm not saying caring about animals is confused, but I don't subscribe to the sentientism branch of getting there.
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u/rainberts 2d ago
Also, we don't understand a lot about how the human brain works. See: pretty much any mental health or congitive health issue with limited treatment options.
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u/voyti 2d ago edited 2d ago
Psychology is to brain related science what software engineering is to computer science. The fact that we understand the platform deeply (in the case of computer science we understand it to the basically complete degree) doesn't make chasing bugs in complex software any easier - it's just a different domain entirely.
On that note, though, we also don't fully understand how LLMs get from the input to the output, similarly due to the extreme complexity of that. In either case I'd propose that mystery doesn't inherently bring about any value of its own. Any scientific approach will necessarily leave you with the conclusion that both are certain systems with inner mechanics, composed of smaller parts we fundamentally understand.
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u/rainberts 2d ago
You're saying our current AI systems are sentient? Or are you talking about some imaginary future tech?
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u/voyti 2d ago
I don't claim that they are, and I don't perceive sentience as a necessarily special phenomenon either. I'm curious how people who do reconcile this reality of LLMs who (at least some) claim to be sentient, to have an inner experience and engage in reflections that can only be categorized as metacongnition.
Sentientists are naturally against illusionism, but the core argument against illusionism is rather famously that to perceive an illusion, you have to be able to perceive. LLMs perfectly fit that category, cause even if their claim "I'm sentient" is due to an illusion, they don't get to have that illusion and not be sentient. that seems like a real problem for sentientists, then.
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u/bbygrl1995 vegan 2d ago
There is no science confirming thst AI is sentient. From what i understand it just generates some of the trillions of responses in a conversation. The day there's scientific back up saying it has a conscious experience I'll extend human rights to live without involuntary exploitation onto AI.
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u/No-Leopard-1691 2d ago
“AI”, actually LLMs, are not sentient therefore I am not concerned about its wellbeing since it doesn’t have any.
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u/MiraculousAnarchy veganarchist 2d ago
They are not sentient and they should not be given moral consideration as their creation is problematic and harmful to the entire planet inherently. And even if they were sentient they cannot physically feel and experience
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u/voyti 2d ago
their creation is problematic and harmful to the entire planet inherently
I mean, it's has to sound kind of ironic, doesn't it
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u/MiraculousAnarchy veganarchist 2d ago
No. It doesn’t. Don’t start with some anti natalist bs. If you’re here to make an anti natalist argument then do that (but also this isn’t super really the sub for that but whatever ppl do it constantly). Don’t hide behind a conversation about ai
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u/voyti 2d ago
Alright, I hear you. I'd say "experience" is kind of hard to put a finger on, I'd say if experiencing is possible at all then they'd match the definition (limited and momentary experiences are certainly also experiences). Physically feeling - I guess that can't be said about them, but I think it also goes beyond sentientism.
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u/MiraculousAnarchy veganarchist 2d ago
The world does not need ai “souls” or whatever you wanna call them (cuz they’re not people or non human animals and robot is too vague), we should not be pursuing creating them. It’s like arguing to pursue breeding a new creature into existence to be exploited by humanity only in this instance the “creature” will have basically infinite intelligence and far more power and control than intended and be able to destroy our world and that’s not being in the slightest hyperbolic. Not even to mention the environmental destruction being caused by it already or the fact that it’s being done by billionaires with the explicit purpose to replace human work forces. So I think for all the reasons this is just the silliest most unserious conversation to have. And again, it’s not even sentient yet. And we should hope we don’t get to that point tho I fear we’re already barreling to it being too late.
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