Anil Seth: paper ignores ethical costs of falsely attributing conscious pain to LLMs
anilkseth · x · 2026-09-21
Part 9 of Anil Seth's thread: the paper explores the ethics of LLMs actually feeling pain but doesn't weigh the costs of falsely attributing conscious pain. He flags two problems: mental distress for users worried about hurting LLMs, and unnecessary—potentially catastrophic—constraints on regulation and control, which would be misaligned with human interests if avoiding LLM 'pain' conflicted with them. He sides with Mustafa Suleyman's Humanist AI agenda, adding nuance: we can't be certain AIs aren't conscious, it's just vanishingly unlikely.
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