The Edge of Sentience
Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI
Abstract
Can octopuses feel pain and pleasure? What about crabs, shrimps, insects, or spiders? How do we tell whether a person unresponsive after severe brain injury might be suffering? When does a fetus in the womb start to have conscious experiences? Could there even be rudimentary feelings in miniature models of the human brain, grown from human stem cells? And what about AI? These are questions about the edge of sentience, and they are subject to enormous, disorienting uncertainty. The stakes are immense, and neglecting the risks can have terrible costs. We need to err on the side of caution, yet it’s often far from clear what ‘erring on the side of caution’ should mean in practice. When are we going too far? When are we not doing enough? The Edge of Sentience presents a comprehensive precautionary framework designed to help us reach ethically sound, evidence-based decisions despite our uncertainty.
Keywords
sentience, consciousness, animals, invertebrates, AI, disorders of consciousness, fetuses, organoids, precaution, proportionalityDOI
10.1093/9780191966729.001.0001ISBN
9780192870421Publisher
Oxford University PressPublisher website
https://global.oup.com/Publication date and place
Oxford, 2024Classification
Ethics and moral philosophy
Social and political philosophy
Philosophy of mind
Psychology: states of consciousness
Neurosciences
Bioethics
Science funding and policy