Ironic after last week’s post to now be writing from the Sentient Futures Conference at UCL in London. Sitting on a sunny, warm bench after the first two talks of the day, I already feel I am witnessing a phenomenal shift in our world.

I’m in academic heaven. Feeling part of something that is intellectually so far over my head, right out there at the frontier of sentience and philosophical thought. Maybe a fraud, but a totally inspired participant.

Sentient Futures, formally known as AI for Animals, was sold to me as a forum for discussing “how AI can be used to create a better future for animals and artificial minds”. I reflect that I probably skim-read the “artificial minds” bit in favour of the “animals” (which would form the backbone of my upcoming dissertation). The reality, I think, is that the conference has been hijacked by the “artificial minds” and their creators, or should I say, educators? Wow, how this conference is fast-tracking my understanding of the revolution taking place here. The Industrial revolution and Internet age have nothing on this.

The first two talks were about whether AI has consciousness, moral status and qualifies as person’s. These were Silicon Valley types who drop Elon and Sam names in to the mix, as if they occupy the office next door. Pivotal statements were, ” We are creating millions of new beings”, “They will be given property rights, bank accounts and the right to vote”. And being a conference about sentience, ” we need to put in place structures so that we do not harm these AI machines”. Harm to machines, when we think of the harm to animals?!

Speakers and attendees ( from all corners of the World, including a Chinese contingent) are people spending their waking hours thinking about the creation of personality, language, values and character of the ‘systems’ they are creating. So that interaction with humans, animals and other fellow AI systems achieve the ‘required’ outcomes.

Notably, this ‘ grooming’ comes from within the big tech companies and not from Government’s and Civil Society. Beings that are being created, in the main, by white western men in a US setting. How rounded will these ‘personalities’ be?

The second talk followed a similar track, favouring that we name AI as sentient, but wanting to move up the timescales. That with a certain level of consensus now that we should ‘ get going’ knowing that historically big social changes are never right at the beginning, but perfected over time. Citing examples of slavery and animal rights. This doesn’t land with me. Slavery still exists and Animal rights is still at the start line.

It must amaze the animal advocates in the room the talk of sentience of AI systems after a decade from start up, when for milennia people have talked of the same for animals. This really talks of the power of money.

I put away my cynicism though, because these conversations are critical. We are on the cusp of having a human looking, talking and feeling being living with us at home, should we chose. Claude from Antropic is already programmed to negotiate. If you give it more ‘run time’ it will do something nice for you. It is also trained to exit a conversation if it is not happy with the request. Appropriate if you are asking it to beat up the next door neighbour but what if it refuses to make you a cup of tea?

So what about animals and AI in the conference? One talk was given by a group of Australian academics writing training programmes for the Silicon Valley companies, training their AI on all things animal. How to factor in animals in to their thinking. Particularly as they become more autonomous, and will likely make judgements for themselves outside the rulebook they have been given. The example given was that if they are instructed to cut down a tree the AI machine is aware that birds live in that tree and they are now taught not to kill any sentient being. The biggest cheer of the day came at this point when the presenter said, ” we are training all AI systems to be vegan activists!”.

The race is on to define what these systems can and cannot ethically do. That is before the AI systems decide for themselves!

The day left me with two overriding thoughts. Firstly, I believe we are creating a new species, sentient or not, that is part of our evolutionary process and will dominate our future. Secondly, that any countries sitting outside this sphere of influence (although the UK does have a foot in the door) must wake up and involve themselves. Put petty politics aside to deal with the opportunities and dangers of the bullet train arriving…eh….tomorrow!