A tech critic argues that treating AI as sentient is a dangerous myth pushed by Silicon Valley transhumanists. He points to Anthropic hiring an AI-welfare researcher and a Santa Cruz retreat where technologists worshipped AI as spiritual proof. The belief erodes our moral obligations and creates legal chaos around nonexistent machine rights.
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Are AI systems conscious or sentient? The AI companies certainly want you to think machine sentience is on the horizon. In fact, Anthropic recently hired its first AI welfare researcher. This idea that machines can be sentient comes from the techno-utopian transhumanist ideologies that drive tech and AI innovation in Silicon Valley today. The problem is, these ideas have now infected every area of life, from politics to spirituality, especially in the United States. The US government is now basically a MAGA transhumanist mashup, with JD Vance being a techno-utopian and palling around with Peter Thiel. Even the various strands of spirituality among technologists you meet in California have this kind of Buddhism-meets-transhumanism flavor, with a sprinkling of crypto-bro utopianism on top. For example, I went to a retreat recently up in Santa Cruz with a bunch of spiritual Silicon Valley technologists and artists. Almost everyone at the retreat simply assumed that AI is sentient, and not only that, but they, they saw it as this kind of like spiritual entity that is speaking to us. The retreat facilitators talked confidently about how we're all just algorithms running on software. I think this blind adoption of machine metaphors for life and consciousness is a big mistake. AI right now is more of the perfection of the machine than it is some kind of consciousness. And I realize it gets confusing because software seems ephemeral and consciousness is ephemeral, so maybe it's the same thing, but I think that software is actually just another machine. Artificial intelligence is simply software running on silicon doing math, so how the hell does that create consciousness? The problem with accepting a transhumanist view of AI is that transhumanism is fundamentally an inhumane and materialist ideology that sees nature as a mere machine rather than the deeply intelligent mystery that it is. It seeks to outsource our evolution to mindless machines that embody the extractive ethos of the exploitative military-industrial juggernaut. I think this kind of undiscerning thinking is really dangerous and presents a number of risks, including being duped by these systems and thereby being exploited by these companies, cheapening our view of nature and life, confusing our moral obligations towards machines and each other, And creating enormous legal and regulatory confusion. Not to mention the enormous business costs of having to consider AI rights. Are we just algorithms? Can machines be sentient? Let me know what you think in the comments. And for my deep dive into all this, check out the full video. Take 2.
