“The story of the first artificial Ego Machines, those postbiotic phenomenal selves with no civil rights and no lobby in any ethics committee, nicely illustrates how the capacity for suffering emerges along with the phenomenal Ego; suffering starts in the Ego Tunnel. It also presents a principled argument against the creation of artificial consciousness as a goal of academic research. Albert Camus spoke of the solidarity of all finite beings against death. In the same sense, all sentient beings capable of suffering should constitute a solidarity against suffering. Out of this solidarity, we should refrain from doing anything that could increase the overall amount of suffering and confusion in the universe. While all sorts of theoretical complications arise, we can agree not to gratuitously increase the overall amount of suffering in the universe – and creating Ego Machines would very likely do this right from the beginning. We could create suffering postbiotic Ego Machines before having understood which properties of our biological history, bodies, and brains are the roots of our own suffering. Preventing and minimizing suffering wherever possible also includes the ethics of risktaking: I believe we should not even risk the realization of artificial phenomenal self-models.”

— Thomas Metzinger, The Ego Tunnel