AI Welfare: Agency, Consciousness, Sentience

AI systems have welfare just in case they have moral status in their own right. This book systematically investigates the possibility of AI welfare. It focuses on three plausible sufficient conditions for welfare: having beliefs and desires, being conscious, and feeling pleasure and displeasure. The book explores the leading philosophical theories of each condition and applies them to AIs. It argues that some existing AIs plausibly have beliefs and desires; that some existing AIs could plausibly be modified in small ways to become conscious; and that if these systems could be made conscious, they could easily be made to feel pleasure and displeasure. This constitutes a provisional case that AIs already or soon may have welfare. In addition, the book lays out nine open questions about AI welfare, as follows: Do all desires contribute to welfare, or only those that cause pleasure? Is consciousness required for welfare? Do simpler AIs like Roombas have welfare? Do tiny neural networks satisfy functionalist theories of consciousness? Does consciousness require rich representational formats? Could AIs experience bodily pleasures and displeasures? Are pleasure and displeasure always access-conscious? Are simulated minds real? Are LLMs and related systems merely stochastic parrots? The book lays out provisional answers to each of these questions, while also leaving room for future discussion.