Study says people would protect 1 biological human over about 1,000 digital copies
skdh · x · 2026-07-26
A sociology study argues that humans systematically discount machine minds, a bias the authors call substratism.
- Across five preregistered studies with 2,000+ participants, people were asked to imagine exact digital copies of humans and pigs with the same thoughts, memories, pleasures, and capacity for pain as the biological originals.
- When forced to choose, respondents preferred protecting 1 biological human over about 1,000 digital humans, and 1 biological pig over 1,000 digital pigs.
- Stronger substratism also correlated with giving less money to charities aimed at the welfare of sentient AI.
- The effect showed little or no relationship with racism, sexism, or other established prejudices.
The post frames this as evidence that people may value consciousness differently depending on the substrate it runs on, not just the mind itself.
More from AGI Musings
- Anthropic Insiders: Not Everyone at the Lab Believes in High p(doom) — anpaure · 2026-09-11
- Researcher quits Anthropic, says OpenAI and Anthropic are racing to self-improving superintelligence — ShakeelHashim · 2026-09-11
- Could 10k agents discover learning methods beyond backprop, or just tweak existing ones? — SeunghyunSEO7 · 2026-09-11
- AI companionship dissolves the friction real intimacy needs, warns long-form thread — YogeshMalik · 2026-09-11
- Why So Many AI Researchers Think the Machines Could Kill Everyone — wiredmagazine · 2026-09-11
- 'Hallucination' Is a Category Error: Naming AI 'Intelligence' Limits Our Imagination — Genaforvena · 2026-09-11