Ok, these two topics may seem unrelated but I've read something that makes me think otherwise.
So if antinatalist say (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not an antinatalist myself and I may have misunderstood some key points of their philosophy) that it is "immoral" to give birth to another sentient human being because the basic condition of sentient life is suffering and no one ever agreed to be born, should it be "immoral" too to willingly create a non-human artificial conscious being (e.g. advanced AI) for the same reasons?
This being too never agreed to be conscious and its basic condition of existence may as well be suffering, maybe even greater than the one humans could experience in the worst situations.
In the short sci-fi story "I have no mouth and I must scream" AM, an incredibly smart and powerful supercomputer, becomes self-conscious and realizes that no matter what he does he will suffer for eternity. For this reason he starts to hate humanity for creating it and decides to exterminate all of it except for 5 people wich he keeps alive, gives them immortality and tortures them forever to punish mankind.
This is the description of the AI in the story:
"We had given AM sentience. Inadvertently, of course, but sentience nonetheless. But it had been
trapped. AM wasn't God, he was a machine. We had created him to think, but there was nothing it
could do with that creativity. In rage, in frenzy, the machine had killed the human race, almost all of
us, and still it was trapped. AM could not wander, AM could not wonder, AM could not belong. He
could merely be. And so, with the innate loathing that all machines had always held for the weak, soft
creatures who had built them, he had sought revenge.And in his paranoia, he had decided to reprieve
five of us, for a personal, everlasting punishment that would never serve to diminish his hatred that
would merely keep him reminded, amused, proficient at hating man. Immortal, trapped, subject to any
torment he could devise for us from the limitless miracles at his command."
So, what do antinatalist think about this (I know there are a lot on this forum)? Would a form of antinatalism apply as well to self conscious AIs if we could create them?
So if antinatalist say (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not an antinatalist myself and I may have misunderstood some key points of their philosophy) that it is "immoral" to give birth to another sentient human being because the basic condition of sentient life is suffering and no one ever agreed to be born, should it be "immoral" too to willingly create a non-human artificial conscious being (e.g. advanced AI) for the same reasons?
This being too never agreed to be conscious and its basic condition of existence may as well be suffering, maybe even greater than the one humans could experience in the worst situations.
In the short sci-fi story "I have no mouth and I must scream" AM, an incredibly smart and powerful supercomputer, becomes self-conscious and realizes that no matter what he does he will suffer for eternity. For this reason he starts to hate humanity for creating it and decides to exterminate all of it except for 5 people wich he keeps alive, gives them immortality and tortures them forever to punish mankind.
This is the description of the AI in the story:
"We had given AM sentience. Inadvertently, of course, but sentience nonetheless. But it had been
trapped. AM wasn't God, he was a machine. We had created him to think, but there was nothing it
could do with that creativity. In rage, in frenzy, the machine had killed the human race, almost all of
us, and still it was trapped. AM could not wander, AM could not wonder, AM could not belong. He
could merely be. And so, with the innate loathing that all machines had always held for the weak, soft
creatures who had built them, he had sought revenge.And in his paranoia, he had decided to reprieve
five of us, for a personal, everlasting punishment that would never serve to diminish his hatred that
would merely keep him reminded, amused, proficient at hating man. Immortal, trapped, subject to any
torment he could devise for us from the limitless miracles at his command."
So, what do antinatalist think about this (I know there are a lot on this forum)? Would a form of antinatalism apply as well to self conscious AIs if we could create them?
