No. I’m very certain that my Roomba is not conscious. But If we can’t tell whether or not these people are conscious or not, then I don’t think it’s right to have this power over them. A better parallel than a Roomba would be an animal.
I think it matters a great deal! I would like to believe that not only would I not use such a system, I would actively fight to have it made illegal.
How do you test that? How do you know that people around you actually have conscious and not just seem to have? If you can’t experience anything, how do you fake conscious? And is this fake conscious really any less real than ours? I think anything that resembles conscious well enough to fool people could be argued to be real, even if it’s different to ours.
What’s the difference seeming conscious and being conscious?
First semester of my cs degree, it was around 50/50. After 3 semesters very few women were left. Spoiler: it was not because they could not handle the courses.
I’m saying that appears conscious and is conscious could very well be the same thing, we don’t know, so in this imaginary world, I would not trust anyone who told me “don’t worry, you can torture them, they are not actually conscious”.