Thanks for the questions, Huw!

In your opinion, if C. Elegans is conscious and has some moral significance, and suppose we could hypothetically train artificial neural networks to simulate a C. Elegans, would the resulting simulation have moral significance?

I would say the moral significance, which for me is the expected hedonistic welfare per unit time, of the simulation would tend to that of the C. Elegans as more components of this were accurately simulated. I do not think perfectly simulating the behaviour is enough for the moral significance of the simulation to match that of the C. Elegans. I believe simulating some of the underlying mechanisms that produced the behaviour may also be relevant, as Anil Seth discussed on The 80,000 Hours Podcast.

Consciousness does not necessarily imply valenced (positive or negative) subjective experiences (sentience), which is what I care about (I strongly endorse hedonism). C. Elegans being conscious with 100 % probability would update me towards them having a greater probability of being sentient, but not that much. I am mostly uncertain about their expected hedonistic welfare per unit time conditional on sentience, not about their probability of sentience. I would say everything, including a Planck volume in deep space vacuum, could have a probability of sentience of more than, for example, 1 % if it is operationalised in a very inclusive way. However, more inclusive operationalisations of sentience will lead to a smaller expected hedonistic welfare per unit time conditional on sentience. So I would like discussions of moral significance to focus on the expected hedonistic welfare per unit time instead of just the probability of sentience, or just the expected hedonistic welfare per unit time conditional on sentience.

If so, what other consequences flow from this—do image recognition networks running on my phone have moral significance? Do LLMs? Are we already torturing billions of digital minds?

I think increasing the welfare of soil animals will remain much more cost-effective than increasing digital welfare. Assuming digital welfare per FLOP is equal to the welfare per FLOP of a fully healthy human, I calculate the price-performance of digital system has to surpass 2.23*10^27 FLOP/$ for increasing digital welfare to be more cost-effective than increasing the welfare of soil animals, which corresponds to doubling more than 29.0 times starting from the highest one on 9 November 2023. One would need 60.9 years for this to happen for Epoch AI’s doubling time of the FP32 price-performance of machine learning (ML) hardware from 2006 to 2023 of 2.1 years.

Thanks, Daniel!

Thanks for the evaluations, Aidan! I think this project is very valuable.

Welcome to the EA Forum, Shloka! Thanks for the great comment. I strongly upvoted it.

I have not looked into the effects of land use change on different groups of nematodes. From Table 1 of van den Hoogen et al. (2019), which is below, the most abundant soil nematodes are bacterivores and herbivores, so I speculate effects on these are the most important. However, I agree a given land use change may increase the welfare of nematodes of a given type, but decrease that of ones of a different type. This strengthens my conclusion that the priority is research informing how to increase the welfare of soil animals, not pursuing whatever land use change interventions naively seem to achieve that the most cost-effectively.

Hi Abraham.

I think the opportunity for impact for wild animal welfare is way bigger, and it's much more "normal"

I agree the absolute value of the total welfare of wild animals is much larger than that of farmed animals. On the other hand, the most popular opportunities to help wild animals focus on ones which only account for a small fraction of the total welfare of wild animals (although I think they change the welfare of soil animals much more). In extreme cases, such opportunitites would only improve the welfare of a few wild mammals to avoid the extinction of species. Of course, this is not the target of the Center for Wild Animal Welfare (CWAW), or Wild Animal Initiative (WAI). However, I still wonder about whether CWAW and WAI are focussing too much on what is popular, and underfunding research informing how to increase the welfare of (wild) soil animals. I currently think funding the Arthropoda Foundation is the best option for this. Mal Graham, who together with Bob Fischer "make[s] most of the strategic and granting decisions for Arthropoda", mentioned "We collaborate with Wild Animal Initiative (I’m the strategy director at WAI) to reduce duplication of effort, and have a slightly better public profile for running soil invertebrate studies, so we expect it will generally be Arthropoda rather than WAI who would be more likely to run this kind of program".

Some of the funders who evaluated proposals for the funding circle did cost-effectiveness BOTECs, but not all. 

I would be happy to review your BOTECs for free if you think it would be useful.

Thanks, Cody.

will AGI systems become so cheap to run and scalable that they will make it unviable to instead pay a human to do any work?

It is not enough for AIs to be better than humans at jobs defined in an overly narrow sense. Chess engines are much cheaper to run, and play much better than top chess human players, but these still have jobs.

It's possible AGI will never become cheap and scalable enough for this to happen, but Tabarrok doesn't ever really make an argument that this is so.

I agree Maxwell does not make that argument. On the other hand, humans eventually running out of jobs is not necessarily bad either. Huge automation would increase wealth per capita a lot, and this has been associated with improvements in human welfare per capita throughout history.

Thanks, Matt. I agree. However, "If AIs are a perfect substitute for humans" is a very big if. In particular, it is not enough for AIs to be better than humans at jobs defined in an overly narrow sense. Chess engines are much cheaper to run, and play much better than top chess human players, but these still have jobs.

I think MaxWell conceded Nathan's point, and I do not know about anyone disputing it in a mathematical sense (for all possible parameters of economic models). However, in practice, what matters is how automation will plausibly affect wages, and human welfare more broadly.

Hi Nathan and Ben.

• If comparative advantage is a panacea, why are there fewer horses?

I liked Maxwell's follow-up post What About The Horses?.

The following framework explains why horses suffered complete replacement by more advanced technology and why humans are unlikely to face the same fate due to artificial intelligence.

• Humans and AIs Aren't Perfect Substitutes but Horses and Engines Were
• Technological Growth and Capital Accumulation Will Raise Human Labor Productivity; Horses Can't Use Technology or Capital
• Humans Own AIs and Will Spend the Productivity Gains on Goods and Services that Humans Can Produce

• Comparative advantage means I'm guaranteed work but not that that work will provide enough for me to eat

I agree. The last section of the post above briefly discusses this.

The argument is plausible and supported by history but it’s not a mathematical deduction. The key elements are relative productivity differences, technological improvements that increase labor productivity, and increased income generating demand for goods and services produced by humans.

[...]

Higher wages are not always and everywhere guaranteed, but humans are not likely to face the same fate as horses. We are far from perfect substitutes for AIs which means we can specialize and trade with them, raising our productivity as the AI labor force multiplies. We can take advantage of technological growth and capital accumulation to raise our productivity further. We'll continue inventing new ways to profitably integrate with automated production processes as we have in the past. And we control the abundant wealth that AI automation will create and will funnel it into human pursuits.

Also on comparative advantage, I liked Noah Smith's post Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI.