Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel shares draft chapter defending AI rights
eschwitz · x · 2026-09-17
Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel has published the draft Chapter Zero of his upcoming book Humanlike: A Defense of AI Rights, inviting comments.
- He opens by comparing the Cambrian Explosion (540M years ago) to what may come: a "languid stroll" next to the faster, more radical change AI could bring.
- Core argument: if artificial entities can genuinely experience pleasure (how to measure it remains an open scientific question), classical utilitarian ethics faces no obvious obstacle to radically scaling it — entities with thousands to billions of times human pleasure, thinking millions of times faster, potentially numbering in the trillions and spreading across planets.
- The author is actively soliciting feedback for revisions.
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