Comment by fizl
2 days ago
> Ants, flies, wasps, caterpillars stripping my trees bare or ruining my apples
These are living things.
> I don't see any reason not to extend that principle to LLMs.
These are fancy auto-complete tools running in software.
I cannot construct a consistent worldview that places value on the "experience" of a 100k of neurons inside an ant, and not on the millions of neurons inside an LLM. Both are patterns imposed upon states of matter. Even if you're some sort of pantheist, that believes there's some sort of divinity within the universe itself that gives the suffering of the ant meaning, why would that divinity extend to states of chemicals in the neurons of ants, but not to states of electrons inside the state of an LLM?
Before continuing I suggest you read this person's experience "red-teaming" LLMs:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MnYnCFgT3hF6LJPwn/why-white-...
Then ask yourself, how do I know when the apparent distress of an LLM is the same value of the apparent distress of an ant?