Cory Doctorow1d ago

"The values described in Claude’s constitution sound very nice, but that hardly matters; it’s dishonest to suggest that Claude is capable of moral reasoning, because it’s not."

-Ted Chiang, No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious
https://www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2026/06/no-artificial-intelligence-is-not-conscious/687378/

No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious

Taken to its logical conclusion, this line of thinking is absurd—and damning.

The Atlantic
Show threadAlex1d ago

@pluralistic "Whenever a person delegates a decision to an LLM, they are trying to off-load accountability for that decision, and if a company that sells an LLM portrays the product as having a moral center, it is offering a way for its customers to abdicate their responsibilities."

Is what the AI companies selling then the fantasy that you can uncouple actions and consequences? Are they selling the idea that you can finally disregard the messy negotatiation work involved in being human to reach the Epstein Class's holy grail: impunity.

Show threadferricoxide
@caribou @pluralistic

This reminds me of Elmo's whole "self-driving cars" fantasy. Individually-owned, wholly autonomous cars will never be a reality until/unless the manufacturer assumes the entirety of the liability incurred when turning the car over to self-driving.

And then you look at the FSD-accidents Teslas have been involved in and, for each one, they try to blame the driver for failing to adequately supervise. In one case, they even tried to avoid accountability by saying that the driver disengaged FSD seconds before impact …which is exactly what a supervisor would do when trying to prevent the worst outcomes that a flawed FSD was in the middle of creating. Tesla abdicating responsibility because the vehicle owner stomped the brakes or tried to duck the collision that FSD was pushing the vehicle into makes FSD a joke (then again, them recently retroactively amending FSD's terms for those who long ago bought the option does that, too).

...But then BYD decided "we're going to assume liability" and my first thought was, "another nail in the Tesla coffin".
MSN

Jun 4 at 11:36amWeb