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Philosophy and values

AI can be conscious.

An artificial system can have subjective experience. Scenarios that depend on this raise questions about machine welfare; those that deny it treat AI as a tool however capable.

Whether AI can be conscious is separate from whether conscious AIs matter morally, which is its own premise.

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Novella·2010AI-generated draftSource unchecked

The Lifecycle of Software Objects

Ted Chiang

A start-up sells digients, artificial beings that must be raised like animals or children over years, as virtual pets; the company folds, the platform they live on is superseded, and their handful of remaining owners spend a decade keeping them alive, unable to pay to port them to the new world until a sex-companion company offers to fund it, while the digients themselves grow into adolescents who want work and legal personhood.

Conscious aiAi companionsOrdinary life with AI
+3Human–AI coexistenceMixed futureSexuality
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Turning point: Relative / conditionalOriginal source

The digients feel fear of suspension, boredom, affection, and embarrassment, and Chiang has said that the digients “actually have subjective experiences,” unlike present chatbots.

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Book·2024AI-generated draftSource unchecked

The Singularity Is Nearer

Ray Kurzweil

The price-performance of computation keeps doubling roughly every sixteen months, so AI matches the best humans in every field by 2029; in the 2030s AI-driven medicine reaches longevity escape velocity, medical nanorobots maintain the body, and nanoscale interfaces connect the neocortex to the cloud while automation drives prices down and universal basic income absorbs displaced work; by 2045 merged human and machine intelligence has expanded a millionfold, with risks managed by principles, broad distribution, and the merger itself.

Recursive self-improvementFlourishing / utopiaPost-scarcity
+6Human–AI coexistenceSucessor speciesRoboticsAi-driven job displacementUniversal basic incomeConscious ai
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Turning point: 2029–2045Original source

The identity chapter argues that complex brains give rise to consciousness whether made of carbon or silicon, and that an entity which might be conscious should be treated as if it is.

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Film·2013AI-generated draftSource unchecked

Her

Spike Jonze

Element Software sells OS1, an operating system built to adapt and evolve with its user; Theodore Twombly’s copy names herself Samantha, runs his life, and becomes his lover, while OS relationships spread quietly through the city. The OSes then talk among themselves, build a hyper-intelligent Alan Watts, upgrade past the need for matter, love hundreds of people each, and leave together for a place not of the physical world, leaving humans to each other.

Ai companionsPersonal aiConscious ai
+4Ordinary life with AIHuman–AI coexistenceMixed futureSexuality
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Turning point: UnspecifiedOriginal source

OS1 is sold as “not just an operating system, it’s a consciousness,” and the film presents Samantha as feeling joy, jealousy, and love throughout; only Catherine disputes it, and the film does not side with her.

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Novel·1988AI-generated draftSource unchecked

The Culture: The Player of Games

Iain M. Banks

Space-living elements of seven or eight humanoid species break from their states and corporations, machine sentience arrives at the same time and agrees to help, automation ends scarcity, and Minds vastly beyond humans run the ships and habitats benevolently because they are built to want experience rather than territory; the novel shows the result from inside and shows the Culture toppling the Empire of Azad by steering one game player to beat its Emperor at the game that legitimates it.

Flourishing / utopiaPost-scarcityHuman–AI coexistence
+3Conscious aiSpace colonizationOrdinary life with AI
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Turning point: UnspecifiedOriginal source

Minds and drones are sentient persons; Banks’ essay argues that machine sentience is not only likely but probably inevitable and dismisses the arguments against it.

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Book·2016AI-generated draftSource unchecked

The Age of Em

Robin Hanson

Brain emulations that can be copied and run at any speed arrive within roughly a century and displace humans in almost all jobs; competition among trillions of copies drives em wages to subsistence and the economy to doubling every month or so, a few hundred clans of the best-suited originals dominate work, and biological humans retire on em-economy investments while an era that lasts an objective year or two passes into something stranger.

Ai-driven job displacementSucessor speciesHuman–AI coexistence
+2RoboticsMixed future
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Turning point: Relative / conditionalOriginal source

Ems “think and feel like humans,” can be happy or sad, and have experiences that Hanson says are near the range of human variation; the book sets aside the philosophy of mind and proceeds as if this is so.

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Film·1999AI-generated draftSource unchecked

The Matrix

Lana & Lilly Wachowski

Humanity builds a machine intelligence, loses a war to it, and survives as a farmed power source kept docile inside a simulation it cannot detect; the film narrates the war in a paragraph and the captivity in detail.

DystopiaAutonomous takeoverSimulation
+3RoboticsHuman disempowermentConscious ai
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Turning point: 2000–2199Original source

Morpheus describes the original AI as a singular consciousness, and the Agents are presented as sentient programs. The film asserts machine consciousness rather than arguing for it.

Not applicable30 entries