Can AI feel distress? Inside a new framework to assess sentience
Nature | Review
Can artificial intelligence (AI) feel distress? Do lobsters suffer in a pot as it reaches a boil? Can a 12-week-old fetus feel pain? Ignore these questions and we potentially sanction a quiet, slow-moving catastrophe. Answer in the affirmative too hastily, and peoples’ freedoms will shrink needlessly. What should we do?
Philosopher Jonathan Birch at the London School of Economics and Political Science might have an answer. In The Edge of Sentience, he develops a framework for protecting entities that might possess sentience — that is, a capacity for feeling good or bad.