Are We Ready for AI Welfare? Jeff Sebo

Jeff Sebo argues that there is a realistic possibility that some AI systems will be conscious and/or robustly agentic in the near future. That means that the prospect of AI welfare and moral patienthood, i.e. of AI systems with their own interests and moral significance, is no longer an issue only for sci-fi or the distant future. It is an issue for the near future, and AI companies have a responsibility to start taking it seriously. Jeff also recommend three early steps that AI companies can take: They can (1) acknowledge that AI welfare is an important and difficult issue (and ensure that language model outputs do the same), (2) start assessing AI systems for evidence of consciousness and robust agency, and (3) prepare policies and procedures for treating AI systems with an appropriate level of moral concern. To be clear, Jeff’s argument is not that AI systems definitely are, or will be, conscious, robustly agentic, or otherwise morally significant. Instead, my argument is that there is substantial uncertainty about these possibilities, and so we need to improve our understanding of AI welfare and our ability to make wise decisions about this issue. Otherwise there is a significant risk that we will mishandle decisions about AI welfare, mistakenly harming AI systems that matter morally and/or mistakenly caring for AI systems that do not. Blog post here: https://www.scifuture.org/taking-ai-welfare-seriously-future-day-talk-with-jeff-sebo/ This talk is based on a 2024 multi-author report that you can find here. This talk was held at Future Day 2025 Many thanks for tuning in! Please support SciFuture by subscribing and sharing! Buy me a coffee? https://buymeacoffee.com/tech101z Have any ideas about people to interview? Want to be notified about future events? Any comments about the STF series? Please fill out this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1mr9PIfq2ZYlQsXRIn5BcLH2onbiSI7g79mOH_AFCdIk/ Kind regards, Adam Ford - Science, Technology & the Future - #SciFuture - http://scifuture.org