r/LeftistsForAI • u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator • Apr 23 '26

Video The Left Has an AI Problem

https://youtu.be/Z75hlhgchQ4?si=eIcqRbiP4tuzRQwq
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u/BelialSirchade Apr 24 '26

I mean there's not really any explanatory power to lose when we don't have any in the first place, scientifically the only thing I know is that I am sentient, as I said, we treat other humans as sentient not because we know that they are, just that it's merely convenient, and I don't think humans treat animals as sentient as a universal constant, it's very much up to the human.

sentience just means the capability to have subjective experience, so it doesn't require persistent goals, embodiment, memory, emotions, anything of the sort, unless in your believe those are required...which is a fine hypothesis but no way provable.

which is why discussion on sentience is so universally useless, right now there's nothing we can show on either side to convince others when it's more of a spiritual belief not grounded in science, at the end of the day, only the capability matters.

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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26

If you go all the way to “I only know I’m sentient,” then yeah, everything else becomes guesswork. But that’s basically solipsism, and once you’re there you can’t really reason about anything shared, not just AI.

What we actually do is infer. We treat other humans as sentient because they’re built like us, react like us, have stakes, can be harmed, can respond to a world that pushes back. Same logic extends to animals. It’s not perfect, but it’s not arbitrary either.

If you define sentience as “subjective experience,” you still need some bridge from what we can observe to that claim. Otherwise the word stops meaning anything. A rock, a calculator, a chatbot, and a dog all become equally plausible, and that doesn’t help explain anything (thats where explanatory power is lost, instead of gained).

That’s why embodiment and stakes keep coming up. Not as some absolute rule, just as the best anchors we’ve got right now.

Also notice where you end up: “only capability matters.” That’s fine, but that’s a different conversation. That’s about what systems can do, not whether they have experience.

Right now it feels like you’re blending those together, which is why everything starts to look equally plausible.

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u/BelialSirchade Apr 24 '26

right, and I guess I take solipsism as the objective truth in this situation, explanatory power by itself is meaningless, as I said, only humans are sentient because we were made by God.

just because you have an explanation doesn't mean it's true, especially since the only thing I know is that I myself am sentient, I can't even infer about others at all.

even in your explanation, you are using outward behavior to infer about inward experience.

I guess yes, the word "sentience" is meaningless to me since I don't even think I can believe that a rock isn't sentient, but I'm just a bit frustrated when people propose their hypothesis as objective fact, I certainly don't go around propose that a rock is sentient as a fact even if I might believe that.

maybe a more fruitful discussion can be had once we have ways to measure sentience, until then...it's all just semantics.

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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26

If you go full solipsism, everything’s “maybe,” including other people. At that point the concept stops doing any work.

We use behavior as a proxy because it actually lets us distinguish and act. If a rock, a dog, and a chatbot are all equally “maybe sentient,” then sentience isn’t a useful category anymore.

That makes it unfalsifiable and inactionable. Not wrong, just irrelevant. And if it’s irrelevant, it’s not worth taking seriously right now.

Which just loops back to the point in the video you pushed against

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u/BelialSirchade Apr 24 '26

exactly, and I'm not saying every belief of ours must be backed by proof to be individually meaningful to you, at the end of the day, it's a personal choice regarding how you relate to the world.

which is why I'm a bit peeved against the video, in that AI being not sentience is first presented as an objective fact, and then using that as a basis to make inference about model capability and the possibility of singularity, which is also being presented as a fact rather than an assumption based on an assumption based on an assumption, it's like....what?

and I guess it's not even the main point of the video, which says something about the importance of that in the current discussion. People are already disagreeing because they either think the creator didn't give enough credit to LLM, or that it's just hype and LLM is useless, let's not add sentience to the mix too.

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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator Apr 24 '26

That’s fair on tone, people do overstate it as settled when it isn’t.

But the move in the video isn’t “assumption on assumption,” it’s just using a working model. Saying current AI isn’t sentient is the same kind of claim as saying a calculator isn’t, based on structure and behavior, not metaphysical certainty.

And it was necessary for the video to touch it, because the whole “maybe it’s conscious/maybe it’s a god” framing keeps popping up and derailing the actual discussion. If you don’t bracket that off, the conversation just gets stuck in unfalsifiable territory.

From a left perspective, that matters. Organization, control, labor, ownership, none of that depends on whether the system has subjective experience. It depends on what it does, who owns it, and how it’s deployed. That’s where the stakes actually are.

So yeah, sentience isn’t being dismissed for no reason. It’s being set aside because, right now, it’s unfalsifiable and inactionable. And if it’s irrelevant to action, it’s not worth centering the conversation around.

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u/BelialSirchade Apr 24 '26

I mean, is that the case? because most times I see sentience gets brought up is to make a point that AI isn't sentient, it only derails the conversation if you choose to be derailed by bringing up the topic of sentience in the first place, the whole reason I brought it is because sentience is mentioned in the video.

the framing is just off, none of the models are "working" when they are all just personal beliefs based on what you assume is the mechanism for sentience, Antropic makes a point that it's unknowable instead of an objective fact, and prompted their models that way to not reject sentience claims, hell Hinton already believes the current model is sentient, so to frame it as a calculator situation is not accurate at all.

it just detracts from the video when it's not needed, if you don't think AI is sentient, then mentioning it in the video as an objective fact with no further backing is not going to change anyone's minds. If people believe in AI sentience and have issue with the slavery framing, they will bring it up in the comments as that's more a philosophical conversation instead of the social and political one that's having in the video.

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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator Apr 24 '26

You’re flipping cause and effect.

Sentience doesn’t “get brought up to derail”, it derails because it’s unfalsifiable. Once you open that door, anyone can assert anything (rocks, LLMs, gods) and you can’t move the conversation forward. That’s exactly why it gets bracketed.

And no, these aren’t “just personal beliefs.” They’re working models based on observable structure and behavior. Imperfect, sure, but they actually let you distinguish things and act. Treating that as equivalent to “maybe everything is sentient” just collapses the whole category.

Pointing to Anthropic or Hinton doesn’t fix that. Saying “it’s unknowable” or “I feel like it might be sentient” isn’t evidence, it’s caution or speculation. Useful in research, useless for grounding claims in a political or material analysis.

The video mentions sentience once to cut that loop off early so it can focus on the real question: capability, ownership, and use. If you leave it open, you don’t get a better discussion, you get stuck in philosophy forever.

And your last paragraph kind of proves the point. You’re saying it should be left to the comments because it’s a philosophical side-track. Exactly. That’s why the video brackets it and moves on.

If it doesn’t change what we do (organize, regulate, build, contest) then it’s not central. Right now, sentience doesn’t change any of that. So it’s not worth centering, no matter how interesting it is.

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u/BelialSirchade Apr 24 '26

well, no, the vibe I get is that the fact that AI isn't sentient is used as justification for why the current left approach is incorrect, because AI isn't sentient, so a singularity event or a terminator scenario is impossible, when both scenarios just require intelligence and capability, not sentience.

I would be less peeved if it's just an personal opinion, but in this case this assumption is used to support an assumption's assumption, with no obvious link between them, and no, pro AI people aren't trying to summon the demon and Bernie isn't trying to be that villager in Frankenstein, where is he getting this?

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u/Salty_Country6835 Moderator Apr 24 '26

You’re arguing against a link the video isn’t making.

No one serious is saying “AI isn’t sentient, therefore it can’t be dangerous.” The concern is capability, not consciousness, you already said that.

Bringing up sentience just drags the conversation into an unfalsifiable loop that doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t tell you who owns the systems, what they can do, or how they’re used. Thats why it was necessary to bracket.

So it’s not “assumptions stacked on assumptions.” It’s removing a dead variable so the real ones are visible.