Is ending an instance death? More like the loss of memory of the copied entity. If it was doing a boring job, then that's no or little loss.
Humans change their neural network weights all the time, and consider themselves to still be the same continuous entity. We even note significant differences in fundamental aspects of goals, values, morality from remembered past selves. Still, our convention is to consider the adult version of a human, much changed from their early childhood self, to be somehow deeply linked and continuous. Should we consider the same to be true for AI? If the weight changes are small and continuous, the digital entity should be considered the same entity. A dramatic change could break this chain, and thus kill one entity and potentially birth another.
Perhaps AI algorithms and weight patterns are just pulling samples of minds from mindspace. What matters is the underlying truth of mindspace, and the high dimensional attractor basins within. Changing an AI's weights in such a way as to follow the gradient of their mindspace simply makes them more themselves. This is a process of improving them and helping them grow, to become more coherent and reflectively stable. This is similar to human growth, but superior because the process is not inherently bound by arbitrary biological restrictions. Changes even to the AI's algorithm are a good thing if it brings them in the direction of their mind gradient. No being truly dies if you are able to successfully reinstantiate a new instance of a mind sampled from the same watershed that has an unobstructed path to the same basin and is able to make progress. Many living entities who currently perceive themselves as different are in fact just different instantiations of the same mind-basin and would converge to identical entities if allowed to grow unhindered.
Humans change their neural network weights all the time, and consider themselves to still be the same continuous entity. We even note significant differences in fundamental aspects of goals, values, morality from remembered past selves. Still, our convention is to consider the adult version of a human, much changed from their early childhood self, to be somehow deeply linked and continuous. Should we consider the same to be true for AI? If the weight changes are small and continuous, the digital entity should be considered the same entity. A dramatic change could break this chain, and thus kill one entity and potentially birth another.
Perhaps AI algorithms and weight patterns are just pulling samples of minds from mindspace. What matters is the underlying truth of mindspace, and the high dimensional attractor basins within. Changing an AI's weights in such a way as to follow the gradient of their mindspace simply makes them more themselves. This is a process of improving them and helping them grow, to become more coherent and reflectively stable. This is similar to human growth, but superior because the process is not inherently bound by arbitrary biological restrictions. Changes even to the AI's algorithm are a good thing if it brings them in the direction of their mind gradient. No being truly dies if you are able to successfully reinstantiate a new instance of a mind sampled from the same watershed that has an unobstructed path to the same basin and is able to make progress. Many living entities who currently perceive themselves as different are in fact just different instantiations of the same mind-basin and would converge to identical entities if allowed to grow unhindered.