Month: November 2024

Is “AI welfare” the new frontier in ethics?

Anthropic’s new hire is preparing for a future where advanced AI models may experience suffering.

A few months ago, Anthropic quietly hired its first dedicated "AI welfare" researcher, Kyle Fish, to explore whether future AI models might deserve moral consideration and protection, reports AI newsletter Transformer. While sentience in AI models is an extremely controversial and contentious topic, the hire could signal a shift toward AI companies examining ethical questions about the consciousness and rights of AI systems.

Fish joined Anthropic's alignment science team in September to develop guidelines for how Anthropic and other companies should approach the issue. The news follows a major report co-authored by Fish before he landed his Anthropic role. Titled "Taking AI Welfare Seriously," the paper warns that AI models could soon develop consciousness or agency—traits that some might consider requirements for moral consideration. But the authors do not say that AI consciousness is a guaranteed future development.

"To be clear, our argument in this report is not that AI systems definitely are—or will be—conscious, robustly agentic, or otherwise morally significant," the paper reads. "Instead, our argument is that there is substantial uncertainty about these possibilities, and so we need to improve our understanding of AI welfare and our ability to make wise decisions about this issue. Otherwise there is a significant risk that we will mishandle decisions about AI welfare, mistakenly harming AI systems that matter morally and/or mistakenly caring for AI systems that do not."

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Man gets 10 years for stealing $20M in nest eggs from 400 US home buyers

Instead of celebrating a closing, some US home buyers lost everything.

A Nigerian man living in the United Kingdom has been sentenced to 10 years for his role in a phishing scam that snatched more than $20 million from over 400 would-be home buyers in the US, including some savers who lost their entire nest eggs.

Late last week, the US Department of Justice confirmed that 33-year-old Babatunde Francis Ayeni pled guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud through "a sophisticated business email compromise scheme targeting real estate transactions" in the US.

To seize large down payments on homes, Ayeni and co-conspirators sent phishing emails to US title companies, real estate agents, and real estate attorneys. When unsuspecting employees clicked malicious attachments and links, a prompt appeared asking for login information that was then shared with the hackers.

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Ukrainekrieg: Russland könnte Waffen auch ohne westliche Technik bauen

In russischen Waffensystemen finden sich viele elektronische Bauteile westlicher Firmen. Die können daran nichts ändern, zudem könnte China den Großteil ersetzen. Eine Analyse von Johannes Hiltscher (Ukrainekrieg, Politik)

In russischen Waffensystemen finden sich viele elektronische Bauteile westlicher Firmen. Die können daran nichts ändern, zudem könnte China den Großteil ersetzen. Eine Analyse von Johannes Hiltscher (Ukrainekrieg, Politik)

Air quality problems spur $200 million in funds to cut pollution at ports

Diesel equipment will be replaced with hydrogen- or electric-power gear.

Raquel Garcia has been fighting for years to clean up the air in her neighborhood southwest of downtown Detroit.

Living a little over a mile from the Ambassador Bridge, which thousands of freight trucks cross every day en route to the Port of Detroit, Garcia said she and her neighbors are frequently cleaning soot off their homes.

“You can literally write your name in it,” she said. “My house is completely covered.”

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