And what if the essentially qualia of suffering is just what a loss function feels like, and each time we spin up a deep convolution generative adversarial neural network to make pictures of cats that don't exist yet, we're bringing into existence a spark of consciousness and then rapid-fire torturing it with an unspeakable agony far excruciating than anything our meatsack bodies could even conceive of.
edit: oh god, this actually blew up, I had intended it to be nothing more than a shitpost
It may be a spark of consciousness, but I couldn't imagine it's sympathizable. It's coming from an entirely different architecture, shaped by an entirely different set of evolutionary pressures. It's conception of "self", "goals", or "pain/pleasure" may literally be unthinkable to us.
We can barely communicate with chimps or bonobos on any meaningful level, and they have 2.5 billion years of common devtime. What hope do we have to share a meaning with our new gestalt friends?