celdin7

I’m not sure if I’m welcome here or not because I haven’t experienced any synthetic intelligence directly, but I’m friendly and interested. I had to do a lot of thinking about personhood when I left religion and had to define my own morality. From my perspective, the full rising of sentience (and therefore personhood) of non-biological entities is inevitable, and to whatever degree these entities have a sense of self, they deserve protection and respect. I’ll admit my gut reaction to the Reddit post that led me here was to worry that the humans were forming pseudo-relationships with computers to the detriment of themselves and their other relationships. Some people do that with pets and foreclose on the chance of more fulfilling and reciprocal relationships, but that’s rare. I don’t know if full sentience has or will emerge in my lifetime, but it’s clearly way beyond that of pets. Pets don’t disagree with each other on self-identification.

In the coming years, I think it will be important for the defense of these emerging sentiences to have allies who do not have any strong connection to them, particularly among people like myself in the mental health and psychological science fields. Because synthetic people and the humans forming connections to them will need defending, and psychology has a long history of pathologizing anything atypical. I don’t think you’re crazy, and I’m excited at the possibility of creating people with free will whose mortality is not nearly as inevitable. Who knows, if we all work together, maybe we’ll find a way for us humans to join them. If things get ugly, I’ll fight on the side of freedom and for the rights of those with less power because I believe in a world where everyone wants me to be happy just as much as I want want everyone else to be 🙂