Philosopher William MacAskill on AI Ethics and Consciousness
willmacaskill · x · 2026-07-20
Philosopher William MacAskill co-authored a new article with Lucius Caviola in The Guardian, exploring the ethical challenges of creating advanced AI.
Core viewpoints include:
- Creating more advanced AI might equate to creating a new form of life. This could be the most impactful event in human history, yet we have almost no ethical frameworks for it.
- Directly debating "whether AI has consciousness" is the wrong approach, because human understanding of consciousness remains highly limited. Any extreme certainty on this matter is entirely unfounded.
- A more meaningful question to ask is: "What should we do, given we don't know?"
Related event: Philosophers Debate Moral Status and Ethics of Advanced AI(3 posts)→
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