Once More, Without Feeling
Andreas Mogensen (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
GPI Working Paper No. 2-2025
I argue for a pluralist theory of moral standing, on which both welfare subjectivity and autonomy can confer moral status. I argue that autonomy doesn’t entail welfare subjectivity, but can ground moral standing in its absence. Although I highlight the existence of plausible views on which autonomy entails phenomenal consciousness, I primarily emphasize the need for philosophical debates about the relationship between phenomenal consciousness and moral standing to engage with neglected questions about the nature of autonomy and its possible links to consciousness, especially if we’re to face up to the ethical challenges future AI systems may pose.
Other working papers
Economic growth under transformative AI – Philip Trammell (Global Priorities Institute, Oxford University) and Anton Korinek (University of Virginia)
Industrialized countries have long seen relatively stable growth in output per capita and a stable labor share. AI may be transformative, in the sense that it may break one or both of these stylized facts. This review outlines the ways this may happen by placing several strands of the literature on AI and growth within a common framework. We first evaluate models in which AI increases output production, for example via increases in capital’s substitutability for labor…
The long-run relationship between per capita incomes and population size – Maya Eden (University of Zurich) and Kevin Kuruc (Population Wellbeing Initiative, University of Texas at Austin)
The relationship between the human population size and per capita incomes has long been debated. Two competing forces feature prominently in these discussions. On the one hand, a larger population means that limited natural resources must be shared among more people. On the other hand, more people means more innovation and faster technological progress, other things equal. We study a model that features both of these channels. A calibration suggests that, in the long run, (marginal) increases in population would…
The end of economic growth? Unintended consequences of a declining population – Charles I. Jones (Stanford University)
In many models, economic growth is driven by people discovering new ideas. These models typically assume either a constant or growing population. However, in high income countries today, fertility is already below its replacement rate: women are having fewer than two children on average. It is a distinct possibility — highlighted in the recent book, Empty Planet — that global population will decline rather than stabilize in the long run. …