Nonconscious Cognitive Suffering: Considering Suffering Risks of Embodied Artificial Intelligence

Embodied artificial intelligence may overcome computational limits of disembodied AI, but it introduces new forms of information integration and decision-making that raise ethical concerns. Drawing on N. Katherine Hayles's concept of nonconscious cognition, the paper argues that embodied AI could possess a type of cognition distinct from consciousness. It proposes that suffering can be understood not merely as a physical or conscious state but as grounded in nonconscious cognition, which could be exacerbated in embodied AI systems. This reframing has implications for applied ethics and the assessment of suffering risks (s-risks) in future AI development.

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Abstract

Strong arguments have been formulated that the computational limits of disembodied artificial intelligence (AI) will, sooner or later, be a problem that needs to be addressed. Similarly, convincing cases for how embodied forms of AI can exceed these limits makes for worthwhile research avenues. This paper discusses how embodied cognition brings with it other forms of information integration and decision-making consequences that typically involve discussions of machine cognition and similarly, machine consciousness. N. Katherine Hayles’s novel conception of nonconscious cognition in her analysis of the human cognition-consciousness connection is discussed in relation to how nonconscious cognition can be envisioned and exacerbated in embodied AI. Similarly, this paper offers a way of understanding the concept of suffering in a way that is different than the conventional sense of attributing it to either a purely physical state or a conscious state, instead of grounding at least a type of suffering in this form of cognition.