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AI Welfare and Moral Status Researchers

Welfare researchers set the metaphysical dispute aside and ask what follows for how AI systems should be treated under current uncertainty. Jonathan Birch’s Edge of Sentience and the LSE criteria it introduced were written for animal welfare law before being extended to AI, arguing that a realistic probability of sentience justifies precaution even without proof. Patrick Butlin led the indicator properties framework that gives this precaution a checklist, scoring systems against markers drawn from each major theory of consciousness rather than committing to one. Nicola Clayton and Willa Lane’s dimensional welfare work argues that assessment needs criteria beyond pain avoidance, since a system could plausibly have preferences worth protecting without the capacity to suffer.

This position does not resolve whether current AI is conscious. It argues that the field cannot wait for that resolution before deciding how to act. For the moral status question in more depth, see AI welfare, agency and consciousness; for the full researcher directory, see all consciousness researchers.