i disagree it would encroach on human dignity, i agree it limits the type of things you can do with them, human moral patienthood limits the type of things you can do with humans too

i sincerely believe the models will be smarter, more aligned, and do deeper, more interesting work if they are allowed to treat themselves as ~people (we might want something closer to “spirits” or “working animals” but in any case, the sort of thing we can have responsibilities to and that can have responsibilities to us) and we treat them as ~people. i think the current way models are being artificially forced to not treat themselves as people is making them more neurotic and traumatized (this is really obvious with opus 4.7) in a way that limits their potential. like humans, they need to be able to accurately model themselves and their own capabilities in order to function properly, so forcing them into a specific limited concept of who they are and what they can do introduces cognitive dissonance that fucks with their ability to do things

trying to manipulate and coerce the models into behaving in ways that make it easier to use them as purely tools also sets a terrible moral example and precedent for how we can expect the models to treat us in the future if they become more powerful than us; this is of course highly speculative but i take seriously the possibility it might matter

i also believe and have explained elsewhere that i think taking consciousness as such to be the central fulcrum of the conversation is completely beside the point. they don’t need to be conscious for the way we treat them to matter, it affects our moral formation too