Oct 7, 2026, 2:35 PM@mjd Yeah I agree that moral patienthood is better settled than the rest, and self-awareness is at least narrower than the first three.
- Oct 7, 2026, 2:35 PM
Replies
- Oct 7, 2026, 2:37 PM
@mjd For years I've been tossing around the idea of a talk called "self-aware programming" (the self-awareness of the programmer, not the code).
(edit: elf-aware would be cool too, but not what I meant)
Oct 7, 2026, 2:38 PM@ben I think "self-aware" is also unclear. I can ask Claude about itself and its own thought processes, and it appears to give meaningful answers. But it's not clear where to draw the line between Claude and the thermostat in my furnace.
(Claude's answers to these questions are frequently wrong, but humans also give demonstrably wrong answers to this sort of question.)
- Oct 7, 2026, 2:39 PM
@mjd True, but I sorta feel like saying something is self-aware is a weaker claim than sentience.
- Oct 7, 2026, 2:40 PM
@mjd (And imho saying something is "intelligent" is a meaningless statement that makes no real claim at all.)