Anthropic is launching a new program to study AI ‘model welfare’

Could future AIs be “conscious,” and experience the world similarly to the way humans do? There’s no strong evidence that they will, but Anthropic isn’t ruling out the possibility. On Thursday, the AI lab announced that it has started a research program to investigate — and prepare to navigate — what it’s calling “model welfare.” As part of the effort, Anthropic says it’ll explore things like how to determine whether the “welfare” of an AI model deserves moral consideration, the potential importance of model “signs of distress,” and possible “low-cost” interventions. There’s major disagreement within the AI community on what human characteristics models “exhibit,” if any, and how we should “treat” them. Many academics believe that AI today can’t approximate consciousness or the human experience, and won’t necessarily be able to in the future. AI as we know it is a statistical prediction engine. It doesn’t really “think” or “feel” as those concepts have traditionally been understood. ... Read full article.