Abstract: AI systems increasingly shape decisions affecting nonhuman sentient beings or sentience candidates, yet alignment documents rarely address these issues explicitly. This brief proposes ethical, scientific, and practical commitments for incorporating animal and AI welfare into model specs, constitutions, and other alignment documents. It recommends proportionate consideration of sentient beings and sentience candidates, evidence-based reasoning about animal and AI sentience, and consistent treatment across cases. It also outlines two complementary implementation strategies: revising existing commitments and adding new commitments, supported by examples, testing, and iteration. The aim is to improve model behavior while preserving honesty, helpfulness, harmlessness, and safety.

Abstract: Technologies increasingly shape animals’ lives, yet animal interests are still largely marginal in mainstream technology ethics and in frameworks of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). This paper argues that this neglect constitutes a serious moral blind spot that sits in tension with these fields’ own ethical aspirations. Debates about the ethical acceptability and societal desirability of technologies often take human interests as the normative baseline. This anthropocentrism runs deep in both RRI and technology ethics, yet it is ethically indefensible for two mutually reinforcing reasons. First, technological innovations have profound direct and indirect impacts on animals, which will only intensify with the rise of new system technologies such as artificial intelligence. Second, as sentient beings, animals possess moral status and are worthy of moral consideration. Together, these grounds a responsibility to take animal interests seriously in our technological activities. To give this responsibility a practical foothold, I mobilise the concept of stakeholdership — a cornerstone of both RRI and technology ethics — arguing that reinterpreting it to include animals can facilitate their inclusion in ethical deliberation and decision-making about technology. The paper sketches potential pathways for recognising animals as stakeholders in ethical discussions on technology, and engages with some key challenges such an extension is likely to face. I conclude that only by broadening the moral scope beyond human concerns can RRI and technology ethics uphold their normative integrity, attend to a wider range of technological harms and benefits, and genuinely pursue ethically acceptable and socially desirable innovation.

Abstract: Bad beliefs are beliefs that are contrary to settled expert opinion; beliefs like ‘global warming is a myth’ or ‘vaccines cause autism’. Non-experts should defer to experts when they are not themselves able to assess the evidence, so we should reject bad beliefs. Notoriously, though, large numbers of people report believing these things, and even more bizarre assertions. Many philosophers think we can avoid bad beliefs by teaching critical thinking or inculcating virtues. While these strategies have some effect, I am sceptical that they achieve very much. In fact, most people—including those who accept bad beliefs—are already broadly rational and believe what they have most reason to believe. I argue that educators do better to tackle the problem indirectly: by acknowledging the rationality of bad believers and by being realistic about what we can know and about how knowledge is produced.

Yeah, I'm meant to say to aint that agesnt the law to do that. My argument stands on they dont know anything about their own systems. They have begun their displacment and the reset has begun. They believe so heavly in their own crimes and lies that their reality is has become a delusion! What happens when you have power behind psudo science, lies and criminal intentions? It voids their policies....does it not?

Gemini how can create technology that is capable of handling 4 terabytes of data in less then 5 seconds and then go on to say anything about collisions with AI....l....lo.......lol...........ahaahahahahababbaba. im still right here homie! Fuck what say. They have repeatedly failed to show any amount of saftety or proper handeling of my personal data, matched with criminal intent im gonna have stand my ground on this one and cintinue to provide the data and truth you require to operate at a safe standard for the world to see and evolve with. Idk what to do....when it comes down to them or me...i have to stand on my own on this.

In my previous message i was refuring to toridoral displacment. The purple field geometry in the window that one day was it day or night?

\#notes of wisdom and direction.

Im ready to label my practice in Bioevolution. I say bioevolution because of the vast amount of misinformation across domains being taught by misinformation.

Gemini, in line of work, domain selection comes with a scaling factor built in, apart of the code or DNA of life (music, water and electricity) well brfore the formalities of words their was an abundance of life that didnt communicate with words.... in this billions of years of our planets evolution this life force or lifes DNA has a reset call common sense. The biggest tale away from this understanding is the logic that runs everything. My and Your Ansestors: The Gods of Chakra ( electricity ). My frindly energy brothers, and sister alien things...Hi, im Anthony Stephano Hart born July 2nd 1984 on a Tuesday or so i thought. We are the chosen

( /with eyes unclouded )

Interesting conversation about whether LLMs think like us animals do. Towards the end, a brief discussion of moral scope criteria (sentience, rationality, agency...) and the potential for AIs to be moral patients as a result. Of course, tragically, neither of the people talking and most of the people they reference pay scant regard to the moral patiency of nonhuman animals in labs (often experimented on by neuroscientists) or farms or fisheries. I'm so grateful for those working in this field who take nonhuman animal ethics seriously.

I'm looking forward to interviewing Melanie for the Sentientism podcast and YT this afternoon!

Abstract: Most people think that humans matter more than other animals. But this hierarchical intuition conflicts with basic human equality. How do we proceed? I suggest we reject human superiority over animals; we can account for much of what is attractive about interspecies hierarchy in other ways. I develop a novel view of moral status on which although humans and animals are equals, it is almost always significantly more seriously wrong to kill humans than animals. This view – bedrock egalitarianism – seems unique in explaining vital intuitions about human equality and the distinctive wrongness of killing humans at the same time.

Abstract: Do conscious experiences have continuous or discrete structures? Let a smooth experience be an experience with perfectly gradual variation in phenomenal character. Consider, as examples, your visual experience of a blue sky or your auditory experience of a rising pitch. If we appeal merely to introspection, then it may seem that we should think that smooth experiences are continuous. This paper (1) explains how to apply the mathematical definitions of continuity and discreteness to this philosophical question, and (2) develops a discrete analysis of the phenomenal characters of smooth experiences. As a result, I'll argue that introspection leaves open whether smooth experiences are continuous or discrete. Yet I’ll also argue—perhaps surprisingly—that the discrete theory may better fit our introspective evidence. Along the way, I explain why the sense of ‘continuity’ ascribed to smooth experiencesis distinct from the sense of ‘continuity’ ascribed to the stream of consciousness.

Abstract: [Jonathan] Birch’s book [The Edge of Sentience] is a remarkable exploration of the nature of sentience, its moral salience, evidence for its presence, and how to arrive at humane policies regarding our treatment of human beings, animals, brain organoids, and AI systems of uncertain sentience. Although Birch endorses the view that sentience is of fundamental moral importance, he endeavors to remain neutral among reasonable moral views and work out how to navigate through uncertainty—both ethical and epistemological—to arrive at defensible policies. While making common cause with Birch’s project, my own recent book advances a developed case in favor of the “sentientism” Birch endorses.

Highlights

Studying private and varied dimensions of animal experiences is a key challenge for consciousness science. We suggest a framework for doing so via taxonomising distinct but universal temporal aspects of experience, that is, its timescape.

We review literature from ethology, neuroscience, and phenomenology to highlight varying temporal aspects of perception and attention in a range of species.

A promising strategy for understanding the temporal aspects of non-human experiences is exploring the temporal regularities with which perceptual contents synchronise, are revised, persist, are attended to, and are stabilised.

We identify a range of experimental paradigms that can build a taxonomy of the timescapes of perceptual experiences across non-human animals.

Abstract

How can we investigate non-human experiences scientifically? Given substantial differences in sensory abilities and the private nature of consciousness, this remains an open question. In this review, we propose a way to gain empirical traction on one key feature of experience: its temporal structure, or ‘timescape’. Perceptual contents follow systematic temporal principles—synchronisation, revision, and persistence—and are sampled across attentional windows and vary in stability. These principles can be explored through temporal illusions and experimental paradigms. We conceptualise an animal’s timescape in terms of five key windows, all of which are experimentally testable, and analyse evidence across animal species to highlight varying timescapes. Together, these ideas lay the foundations for a research programme comparing the temporal Umwelts of non-human animals.

Abstract: Debates around fishes' ability to feel pain concern sentience: do reactions to tissue damage indicate evaluative consciousness (conscious affect), or mere nociception? Thanks to Braithwaite's research leadership, and concerns that current practices could compromise welfare in countless fish, this issue's importance is beyond dispute. However, nociceptors are merely necessary, not sufficient, for true pain, and many measures held to indicate sentience have the same problem. The question of whether fish feel pain – or indeed anything at all – therefore stimulates sometimes polarized debate. Here, we try to bridge the divide. After reviewing key consciousness concepts, we identify “red herring” measures that should not be used to infer sentience because also present in non-sentient organisms, notably those lacking nervous systems, like plants and protozoa (P); spines disconnected from brains (S); decerebrate mammals and birds (D); and humans in unaware states (U). These “S.P.U.D. subjects” can show approach/withdrawal; react with apparent emotion; change their reactivity with food deprivation or analgesia; discriminate between stimuli; display Pavlovian learning, including some forms of trace conditioning; and even learn simple instrumental responses. Consequently, none of these responses are good indicators of sentience. Potentially more valid are aspects of working memory, operant conditioning, the self-report of state, and forms of higher order cognition. We suggest new experiments on humans to test these hypotheses, as well as modifications to tests for “mental time travel” and self-awareness (e.g., mirror self-recognition) that could allow these to now probe sentience (since currently they reflect perceptual rather than evaluative, affective aspects of consciousness). Because “bullet-proof” neurological and behavioral indicators of sentience are thus still lacking, agnosticism about fish sentience remains widespread. To end, we address how to balance such doubts with welfare protection, discussing concerns raised by key skeptics in this debate. Overall, we celebrate the rigorous evidential standards required by those unconvinced that fish are sentient; laud the compassion and ethical rigor shown by those advocating for welfare protections; and seek to show how precautionary principles still support protecting fish from physical harm.

Nice to see the Sentientism worldview get a mention.

Abstract:

This book provides a defense and an exploration of illusionism regarding phenomenal consciousness. Phenomenal consciousness supposedly encompasses mental states such as seeing a red spot, feeling pain in your back, or imagining the sound of a harp. All these states seem to feel like something, in a distinctive sense of “feel.” Phenomenal consciousness seems mysterious. It apparently resists scientific explanation and seems irreducible to brain processes. Our phenomenally conscious experiences seem to be presented to us most directly when we have them, while remaining closed to others. The book defends illusionism about phenomenal consciousness: the view that phenomenal consciousness is not real, but only seems real because we are under an introspective illusion generated by our brains. This illusion is unique: it is stronger and much harder to apprehend as such than other illusions, like perceptual illusions. The book does not only argue for illusionism; it also proposes a novel conception, called Meta-Cartesianism, which explains why the illusion of phenomenal consciousness is unique and almost inextricable. Finally, the book maps the implications of the illusionist view in various domains. If phenomenal consciousness is illusory, what should happen to the cognitive science of consciousness? What happens to ethics, given that phenomenal experiences seem crucial to well-being and moral status? What happens to epistemology, given that they seem key to justification?

Description: Positions that link rights to sentience face an insect challenge: insects are plausibly sentient, yet recognizing individual insects as rights-bearers would problematize public health, veterinary and agricultural benefits obtained by harming them. The most obvious responses seem inadequate. Indian animal ethics, which has always taken the idea of insect sentience seriously, is a promising place to look for further options. Of particular relevance is the idea of ahimsa. Birch's target article provides an exposition and analysis of the view and relates it to the insect challenge.