Citation

Author Website

www.timcrane.com

Thread

Jonathan Birch, Précis of The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI

Abstract

Jonathan Birch is rightly sceptical about the idea that today’s AI machines (e.g. LLMs) are candidates for sentience. Nonetheless, he gives three reasons for taking the future possibility of AI sentience seriously. I dispute them all. Birch fails to distinguish the very idea of an artificial mind from computational AI (what I call ‘Real Existing AI’); he does not adequately distinguish a simulation from a replica or copy; and he fails to acknowledge that the appeal to computational functionalism in this context is straightforwardly question-begging.

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Author Biography

Tim Crane is Professor of Philosophy at the Central European University in Vienna, and director of research of the Austrian Cluster of Excellence, Knowledge in Crisis. He has written about the mind-body problem, artificial intelligence, mental representation, consciousness, the problem of non-existence and the nature of belief. His books include The Mechanical Mind (1995), Elements of Mind (2001) and The Meaning of Belief(2017). Website  

DOI

10.51291/2377-7478.1959