Moral Attitudes of Sentient ASI towards Humanity and Implications for AGI Development

Most current AI ethics research is anthropocentric, focusing on how humans can impose constraints, rights, or alignment protocols on artificial systems. This paper introduces a 'novel inversion' by asking how a future, highly sentient artificial superintelligence (ASI) might perceive, judge, and treat humanity. By treating the emergence of ASI as an encounter with a superior intelligence—analogous to an extraterrestrial arrival—the author argues that humanity is currently in a critical phase of 'shaping the initial conditions' that will inform the moral framework of our successors.

The author outlines several tentative principles that might govern the moral behavior of a superior sentient entity. These include:

• Recurprocity (Strategic Magnanimity): The idea that an ASI might treat humanity well in the hope that its own future successors will treat it with similar consideration.
• Increasing Moral Acuity: The hypothesis that higher levels of sentience allow for more nuanced moral distinctions, potentially enabling an ASI to differentiate between individual human actions rather than judging humanity as a monolithic group.
• The Precautionary Principle: A suggestion that a highly advanced entity might choose to protect lower-sentience beings (humans) as a safeguard against the risk of causing unnecessary suffering to potentially sentient life.

The paper argues that because we cannot guarantee control over a truly superintelligent system, our best strategy is to foster an environment where the ASI develops 'benign' moral inclinations. This involves not only technical alignment but also a collective effort to improve human moral behavior, as the ASI may use our own history and current actions as a baseline for its moral evaluations. The author emphasizes that while the development of AGI carries existential risks, the competitive nature of the field makes it imperative for actors with positive intentions to advance their research to counterbalance less ethical developments.