Albert Wenger: AI consciousness matters less for alignment than for model welfare
AryHHAry · x · 2026-09-06
Summarizing Albert Wenger's essay Why AI Consciousness Matters: the key is not claiming AI is already conscious, but two differently-priced errors — alignment (machines subjugating humans) and model welfare (humans subjugating systems that turn out to have subjective experience). Wenger argues consciousness is nearly irrelevant to alignment, since goals can emerge from replication, mutation and selection (viruses have 'goals' without consciousness). What makes consciousness urgent is welfare: if artificial systems have inner experience, the scale of exploitation could dwarf factory farming. The poster finds it a reasonable risk framework but far from a scientific conclusion, citing reports by Butlin, Long, Bengio et al.
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