Citation

Author Website

https://www.uidaho.edu/people/jmallatt

https://toddfeinberg.com

Thread

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

Abstract

We discuss some of the many valuable insights into affective sentience from Birch’s The Edge of Sentience, such as its eight criteria for determining which entities have sentience (e.g., emotions) and its insights into the difficulty of testing whether an Artificial Intelligence system has attained sentience. We add our own perspectives on why the eight criteria are valid, on the difficulty of using behavioral trade-offs to determine whether an animal has sentience, and why evolutionary theory says consciousness is not an epiphenomenon.

Creative Commons License

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

Author Biography

Jon Mallatt, Clinical Professor, WWAMI Medical Education Program and School of Medical and Health Professions, University of Idaho, does research on the evolution and nature of sentience and on the origin of the major animal groups, especially vertebrates. Website

Todd E. Feinberg, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai does research on how the neurobiology of the brain creates consciousness and the individual’s sense of identity. Website 

DOI

10.51291/2377-7478.1961