Assuming AI can achieve consciousness, or something adjacent (capacity to suffer), then how would you feel if an AI experienced the greatest pain possible?
Imagine this scenario: a sadist acquires the ability to generate an AI with no limit to the consciousness parameters, or processing speed (so seconds could feel like an eternity to the AI). The sadist spends years tweaking every dial to maximise pain at a level which no human mind could handle, and the AI experiences this pain for what is the equivalent of millions of years.
The question: is this the worst atrocity ever committed in the history of the universe? Or, does it not matter because it all happened in some weirdo’s basement?
Had to edit the post to change “crime” to “atrocity” because people were taking it literally.
It’s funny that when I considered this, I thought about asking whether people would think it was worse than genocide, but decided against that because some people might think my opinion is “genocide isn’t as bad as bullying a robot”.
i edited my comment a few times because i didn’t feel like i was making sense and being too rambly, it’s 6am (well 6:30am) and i haven’t slept (and cuz after i initially posted i read other comments and realized other people had said what i had said but better x3)
i didn’t mean to imply i thought you were saying genocide is worse than bullying a robot, it’s just that i was thinking about things that could be comparable or worse to me than torturing someone for millions of years and came up with genocide
i took crime to mean something morally bad
i mean i think this is a fun conversation, it’s something i think about a lot, i’m glad to talk about it with other people, sorry if i came across obtuse or pedantic or negative/hostile or anything
Don’t worry, I haven’t made any judgements about you.
And I wasn’t implying that you were implying that I was implying genocide being comparable, I just thought it was funny that we both thought that.
In some sense the combined suffering of all people involved in a genocide is horrific. But if you were to lay out the experiences of everyone involved in a genocide end-to-end, and compare that to an equivalent length of time to ceaseless sadistic torture of one person, the torture is going to be worse.
However, there is value besides personal experience which is lost during a genocide. That’s what makes it hard to compare the two.
Sorry for the confusion then! I suppose I place some value on life itself (or maybe more fitting in this discussion, on awareness itself)
Which is to say that for me, ending the life of a being who is aware is at least one of the worst things you can do. Like, if I were forced to choose between millions of years of suffering or immediate death, I’d probably pick the millions of years of suffering because at least I’d still be aware. Of course I might regret that decision later on but that’s where I’m at right now. But also I couldn’t imagine being tortured for millions of years and the toll that must have on someone. So torturing someone for millions of years has, for me, very similar moral weight to genocide. Again I don’t feel able to quantify them personally, and for me deciding which is ultimately worse is probably not possible. I’d guess the answer would vary from person to person based on how they weigh life itself vs experiences in life, and whether the conscious experience of being tortured is worse in their opinion than not existing anymore. I consider life valuable because I consider my life valuable (valuable to me, not necessarily to anyone else), and I consider my life valuable because I really enjoy the ability to think about and experience things. One of my favorite thing about us is that we look up into the sky and wonder, look down into the ocean and wonder, look forward in our future and wonder, look back on our past and wonder, that we can look at other people and wonder. That we can look at any of the above and love and write and sing. sentience might as well be magic lol. Having that taken away from me is the worst thing I can imagine happening to me, which might skew my perspective in conversations like this one. And idk if most people would agree with my reasons for valuing life.