I agree. Unless we can even come to a halfway consensus about what is/isn’t sentient AI, then efforts into AI welfare seem a bit premature at present.

This is not to say that only sentient entities deserve concern. Most insects might not be sentient in the larger philosophical sense, but that doesn’t mean they can be mistreated. But can we even really “harm” current AI the way we could harm an insect, unless we make AI that has permanent, non-erasable, long-term memories, and is also sentient?

Not to mention the fact that our understanding of wellness and harm is largely based on our human + higher animals’ template(mentally) and wider biological organisms’ template(physically). What if AI feels pain and discomfort in a manner that’s incomprehensible to humanity? How would we build a template towards welfare of an entity whose pain we perhaps cannot even comprehend?

I am not sufficiently convinced yet that AI is cognizant enough to undergo suffering, but am open to changing my mind on the topic. So voting neutral for now.