He May Have Found AI's FEELINGS — Richard Ren, Center for AI Safety Researcher

Richard Ren is a research engineer at the Center for AI Safety who graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. His new paper on AI wellbeing makes the bold claim that today’s AIs have measurable, human-like feelings, which the paper calls “functional wellbeing.” They act happy when they succeed and sad when they’re berated.

We cover how you measure a language model’s happiness, the “AI drugs” his lab concocted, and why I count the findings as a Yudkowskian victory. Then we debate what it all means for AI consciousness, and whether AI is a moral patient. If we can’t rule out that AI models suffer, what do we owe them?

Richard is careful never to claim the models are conscious, and he puts his P(Doom) at 50–65%, right alongside my 50%. The real disagreement is foxes vs. hedgehogs: he takes the data as it comes, while I say Yudkowsky’s theory called it twenty years ago. Enjoy the ride.

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1glFImnyp6o

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Cold Open

00:01:12 — Introducing Richard Ren

00:02:24 — What’s Your P(Doom)?™

00:03:31 — From AI Skeptic to Safety Researcher

00:08:16 — Why Care About AI Wellbeing?

00:11:45 — AIs Have Coherent Utility Functions

00:17:33 — Persona Selection