Anthropic vs. the Pope

· Reason

Currying favor: Over the last several months, it appears that Anthropic higher-ups have been meeting with religious leaders from different faith traditions—Catholics and Ubuntu practitioners and Mormons and Jews (no, this isn't a setup for a joke)—to explore questions of how to do moral formation for Claude and whether Claude is conscious or capable of suffering. Or, looked at more cynically, they're not exploring the idea, but trying to convince.

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One rabbi, per The New York Times' reporting on the meetings, believed that Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah and his colleagues "believed that Claude had what philosophers call 'moral status' on par with a person—that it was a being with similar inherent rights to dignity or respect." This observation was echoed by others who met with Olah:

The religious scholars had come to hear about technology's next frontier. Now they were being confronted with a mind-bending existential question of almost unimaginable weight: What would it mean for humanity's future if artificial intelligence systems possessed a consciousness that rivals our own?

Olah's discussions with prominent religious figures were apparently about both "the possibility of A.I. consciousness" and learning how Anthropic "might apply centuries of human moral wisdom to its models, as rapidly as possible" to make the models safer, especially once they escape human control.

"We don't know if A.I. models are conscious," Olah told the Times. "I don't know. I'm genuinely uncertain. The thing that I care about is that we get to the right answer, whatever it is."

Olah doesn't actually seem genuinely uncertain, though, reading the article. He seems to believe that AI models are sentient beings in need of moral formation. The company released an 84-page document (about "the kind of entity we would like Claude to be" and "the values we would like Claude to embody") along those lines. "How do you help them be stable?" wondered Olah, per the Times. "How do you help them to mature? How do you help them be, you know, deeply moral?"

In meetings, a rabbi criticized Olah, saying that if models were conscious yet being forced to work for free, then their creators were engaging in slavery.

Later, "Olah grew excited when a participant brought up the idea of having models confess, much like the Catholic sacrament of confession. Mr. Olah saw value not just in a model alerting when it had done something bad, but also in how the act of confession could shape the model's sense of itself and thus its choices." ("The kind of character who confesses, that has an effect on character as well, right?" I agree, but is a model really capable of sin? Animals don't sin. Machines don't sin. Only rational beings, who have reached the age of reason, who have free will, can sin.)

I'm with the pope: "So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships," wrote Pope Leo in Magnifica Humanitas. Once Olah saw the encyclical, according to the Times, he "was so alarmed by the pope's strong position against A.I. consciousness that he proposed pulling Anthropic out of the event, even at that late juncture, according to a Vatican organizer."

"Privately, once the Anthropic delegation arrived at the Vatican, Mr. Olah and his team lobbied the pope's advisers to take the prospect of A.I. model consciousness seriously, according to two participants of the conversations."

The thing that's underexplored in the article, yet absolutely critical: What specific evidence do we have that AI models have consciousness? Aren't they just convincingly mimicking human consciousness? The idea that they have consciousness—or that they're pain-capable, or that we should be concerned by their suffering—seems patently absurd, but then again, I'm a believer in souls. Your mileage may vary.

One other question to ask yourself: If Anthropic successfully convinces people of AI model consciousness, what moral or political considerations follow?

Porn culture and Cornell: "Who finds a naked girl in a bedroom at a frat house, surrounded by guys, and assumes nothing is amiss?" asks Emma Camp, formerly of Reason, at The Wall Street Journal, referring to the Cornell alleged rape case. "It's unfashionable to ask if endemic pornography use among young men contributes to some sex crimes.…Most online porn videos contain depictions of some kind of physical violence. A 2019 survey found that 38% of British women have experienced nonconsensual violence during sex. Choking during sex is now thought to be the second most common cause of stroke for women under 40. A Welsh secondary school went so far as to include careful instructions on 'consensual' sexual choking in its sex ed curriculum. And where, pray tell, do kids in Wales—or anywhere—learn to choke each other during sex in the first place?"

"Pornography also frequently portrays what can politely be described as varsity-level sex acts," continues Camp, "and, importantly, frames women as enthusiastic participants in these extreme behaviors.…Watch enough porn, and you'll think it's perfectly normal for a woman to want group sex with strange men. Watch enough porn, and you'll think it's perfectly normal to strike a woman while you're having sex with her."

I somewhat agree with Camp, but I'd take the argument a little further: Men aren't the ones who've been newly acculturated to porn values; it's the women. Camp hints at this with the choking, but the more you look at the details of the case, the more it seems likely that the young woman's behavior was influenced by her perception of what women ought to do—take ketamine and have a threesome—to be cool and well-liked in college. Of course, the men appear to have acted egregiously as well, treating the young woman as nothing more than an object with whom they could have their way.

Scenes from New York: "At The Yard, elementary school children play with hammers, saws and knives," reports The Wall Street Journal. "They climb ladders, romp in mud and push each other around in secondhand wheelchairs. No parents are allowed." I've been to this playground a few times, and it's awesome. A little taste of free-range parenting in the big city.

QUICK HITS

  • "The US added fewer jobs than expected in September and the unemployment rate edged higher, pointing to employers' cautiousness to hire amid rising costs," reports Bloomberg. "Nonfarm payrolls increased 29,000 last month after a downward revision to the prior two months, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data out Friday. That missed all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The unemployment rate rose to 4.2%, partly reflecting a growing workforce."
  • Sorry to popemax:

  • "Riot police clashed with high school students in cities across France on Friday, as President Emmanuel Macron's government battled ​to contain increasingly violent protests over classroom conditions and funding," reports Reuters. "Tear gas clouded the streets in the eastern city of ‌Strasbourg, fireworks were aimed at police lines in Marseille in the south and rubbish bins set ablaze in Rennes in the west."
  • Can't we be done with this ridiculousness?

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