Citation

Author Website

https://catch.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/team/dr-amanda-sharkey

Thread

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

Abstract

There is another side to the story of the account of artificial sentience — one that makes the possibility of artificial sentience unlikely: the fundamental difference between living bodies and artificial systems.  Sentience occurs in strongly embodied, living entities, and not in disembodied artificial systems, nor in robots. The appearance of sentience is exacerbated by deceptive behaviour and anthropomorphism. The risks of keeping an open mind about the required underlying substrate are in wasted efforts to protect systems that cannot suffer, and in placing inappropriate trust in their abilities.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Author Biography

Amanda Sharkey, retired senior lecturer (associate professor) and visiting academic at University of Sheffield, has an interdisciplinary background in psychology and computer science.  Her current interests are in robot ethics: the ethics of robot care for children and older people; dignity and autonomous weapons; the role of deception in robotics; and the differences between living beings and machines.  Website

DOI

10.51291/2377-7478.1913