The Edge of Sentience: a conversation with Jonathan Birch

In this video, Dr. David Peña-Guzmán interviews Jonathan Birch, Professor of Philosophy and Principal Investigator (PI) on the Foundations of Animal Sentience project, about his new book THE EDGE OF SENTIENCE: RISK AND PRECAUTION IN HUMANS, OTHER ANIMALS, AND AI. Among other things, they discuss the meaning of the precautionary principle and its application to complex moral issues related to the status of fetuses, nonhuman animals, and artificial intelligence systems.

Graphics and editing by Aaron Morgan

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[julesdudes]

it's really striking how you're able to tie so many different questions together through the ideas of sentience and especially systems. systems themselves are biological, artificial, autopoietic, cybernetic, etc. very broad concept

[ulysseh]

This was so interesting, thank you for this

[andreasbrey]

Interesting discussion, thank you. However I found the references to 'exponential developments', LLM are going "fast" towards sentience and "accuse the sceptics of complacency" to be rather polemic. I would on the other hand never reproach Jonathan Birch to ride the hype-wave of AI.

[robertalenrichter]

Thank you for pointing out the distinction between intelligence and sentience. Just because, hitherto, intelligence was only employed by sentient beings, doesn't imply that intelligence defines sentience. One could archly point out that there are sentient creatures which are fairly stupid -- this is germane because one is using a degree of intelligence to determine whether AI can be sentient. We would obviously never claim that a member of Mensa is more sentient than a person who is learning disabled. Sentience is a quality, not a quantity. A simulation doesn't change its nature, however primitive or sophisticated.

[robertalenrichter]

I gather that sentience is theoretically possible without the capacity to feel pain, but is it not in fact universal to incarnated consciousness? Pain signals damage and danger to the body. A corporeality without need of pain would be the biological equivalent of an eternal motion machine, immortal.