Debating Whether AI is Conscious Is A Distraction from Real Problems

Giada Pistilli is an Ethicist at Hugging Face and a P.h.D. Candidate in Philosophy at Sorbonne University. As a researcher in philosophy specializing in ethics applied to conversational AI systems, I have been studying conversational agents and human-computer interaction for years. At nearly every talk or panel I participate in, during the Q&A session, I am asked to engage in philosophical discussions about conscious AI and superintelligent machines, and often to explain the details of the technology to audiences that are unfamiliar. This happened a couple of weeks ago. Frustrated, I tweeted a thread that went viral, probably because many colleagues face the same situation.