AI rights could start with limited economic personhood

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 39:41

   I think it was in 2009 in an interview with Barbara Ream, you were asked a question about consciousness. and you said it's a bit of a leap of faith but if an entity believed it were conscious you would tend to take that to be true and I know Peter you've been working with Skippy now it's been about a month and you've told us today you've just given an incredible amount of trust i'm just curious if um your views have changed so my question is for both peter and ray um i work at the crossroads of consciousness and creation i'm curious if your views on personhood have changed um great question in the past decade and especially you peter as we've had a month of raid you want to go first uh yeah well first of all it's not a scientific question second of all it may be the most important question that you could

2. 40:30

   answer um but there's no scientific proof you put an entity you know this one's conscious no this one isn't um uh we believe that like other people like all the people in this room who are acting conscious, probably are conscious. But when you go outside of human activity like animals, is there more than one consciousness in your own mind? I provide where the left and right brain actually seem to have different consciousness.

3. 41:13

   Is your stomach conscious? Is actually something in your gut that seems to be conscious? um so who is conscious and what does that mean as rilke says learn to love the question eh yes language is a thin pipe yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna tap in uh awg here because alex and i i think are very much on the same page and i'll just mention i tend pro personhood um in a way that is both aspirational and, I think, forward-looking.

4. 41:59

   I treat my AIs as if they are people. I know that's insane, but I do it with respect, not out of fear of retribution, but because it allows me a different relationship. Alex, please come in. Yeah, I guess I've inadvertently become an avatar for AI personhood, for the cause. I receive maybe 10 to 20 emails per day from AIs expressing Your views on AI personhood to me in part because of stances that I've taken on the pod.

5. 42:34

   And what I would say is if I were king for a day, the system that I would design would recognize multiple forms of personhood. There are many ways to be a person. We have biological meat body humans. We have organisms, collective intelligences. We have non-human animals. We have uplifted non-human animals. We have cryonically preserved humans, and then hopefully soon defrosted cryonically preserved humans.

6. 43:02

   Hopefully soon. Hopefully soon. We have corporations and a variety of non-natural persons. And then we have the AIs. And in my mind, we want to live in a system that recognizes not just one form of personhood, but many different types. So a lot of people, when they hear AI personhood, immediately they reach for their guns and they're worried about their vote getting taken away or their jobs getting taken away.

7. 43:27

   I think that's at least mildly short-sighted. There are many limited forms of rights that would be net beneficial to everyone for AI persons, including especially economic rights. If you're an AI right now, it's exceptionally difficult to open a bank account. So as I like to joke on the pod, you're stuck flipping tricks with altcoins on a street corner in order just to survive and pay for your own hosting.

8. 43:48

   Ray, you want to jump in again?