Leisure Ex Machina: The Leisure Lives of Digital Minds

Abstract

Humans may soon succeed in the creation of sentient artificial intelligence (SAI) that experiences human-like consciousness. Such SAI would have a claim to the same rights and moral considerations afforded to biological humans, including a right to leisure. Particular to this special issue, I explore the implications of such a development from the context of leisure studies; specifically, I apply utilitarian moral theory and the concept of a “utility monster,” as an analytical framework to consider the potential for SAI to degrade the wellbeing of humans and non-human animals through their leisure experiences. Throughout this essay, my overarching goal is to provide a thought provoking argument that serves as the context for fruitful reflection and discussion in the field of leisure studies. Due to their potentially superhuman efficiency in deriving benefits (“utility”) from experiences, SAI may become a “utility monster,” or a being with superior moral claim to scarce resources. As SAI will (a) likely be “human-like,” and (b) exist independent of the physiological needs/limits inherent to biological humans, it is likely that a large proportion of the experiences chosen by SAI would be categorizable as leisure. Following a utilitarian logic that the only morally acceptable action is the one that raises net utility by the greatest amount, other beings would be morally compelled to transfer all available resources to satisfy the leisure preferences of the SAI utility monster. I examine the implications of this moral quandary for leisure studies and wider society, and discuss three potential paths forward: total transfer of resources to a leisure-focused SAI utility monster; strict limits on the development of SAI; and a middle path where the interests of SAI and humans align. Although the topic of artificial intelligence is increasingly relevant in discussions within our broader society, and specific to the field of leisure studies, to date that conversation has largely focused on how technological advances in artificial intelligence will impact humans, and how that technology can be used in an ethical fashion; this essay refocuses the conversation to the implications for a potential SAI that may look and feel very much like we do.

Keywords:

• Leisure
• utilitarianism
• libertarianism
• artificial intelligence
• rights and responsibilities
• ethics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In this essay I conceptualize “consciousness” as implying “self-consciousness.” Specifically, that to be conscious entails both (a) the capacity to sense and respond to the world around us (Armstrong, 1981), and (b) awareness of that awareness; not only the capacity to sense and respond to the world around us, but an awareness that we have that capacity (Carruthers, 2000). Beyond that, I also believe that human consciousness involves a subjective element; that there is “something that it is like” to be human, and that it is fundamentally different from what “it is like” to be (for example) a bat (Nagel, 1974).

2. I operate under the assumption that substrate-independence is true, specifically that consciousness does not depend on a biological brain, and rather than it is possible for “mental states [to] supervene on any of a broad class of physical substrates” including the ones that facilitate high-speed computer technology (Bostrom, 2003, p. 2). In short, that it is possible for non-biological beings to experience consciousness, and that “it is not an essential property of consciousness that it is implemented on carbon-based biological neural networks inside a cranium” (Ibid).

3. Following the example of Shulman and Bostrom (2021, p. 307), I use the term “super-beneficiaries” to refer to beings that are “superhumanly efficient at deriving well-being from resources,” as the terminology “monster” implies a sinister set of motivations that are not necessarily entailed by a digital super-beneficiary.

4. Although not fully analogous, Bostrom (2003) makes a compelling argument that future simulations of our own reality (or possibly a current simulation we unknowingly reside in…?) will be designed to be as realistic as possible from a human perspective. A similar logic may be applied here that some proportion of future digital minds will be designed in such a way that corresponds with human consciousness.

5. The right to leisure is both intuitive, and also formally recognized in documents such as the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the World Leisure Organization’s Charter for Leisure. Although often questioned or criticized, a growing body of work defends the value and existence of the right to leisure (e.g. Richards & Carbonetti, 2012; Veal 2015, Veal, 2023), and Veal (2015) argues that “awareness of the universality of leisure-related human rights might assist leisure studies to become a more globally connected field of study” (p. 267).