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A Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life

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Re: A Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life

#131

Post by samhw »

ineedasername wrote: post #92
swid wrote: post #23

The argument that deep network algorithms are just matrix operations is not compelling to me as a reason we aren’t getting there… I believe two things: -1. the universe itself operates on mostly simple rules which can be simulated to high enough precision on hardware to approach what happens in the real world. If we can simulate nuclear reactions, we can simulate consciousness, and that will result in real consciousn…

>If we can simulate nuclear reactions, we can simulate consciousness, and that will result in real consciousness. Nuclear -> consciousness doesn't really follow, especially when any simulations of nuclear reactions are founded in an extremely more comprehensive understanding of nuclear physics than we have of consciousness. Next, the implication of simulation -> creation, when applied consistently to you example, is…

I don’t quite get this simulation/execution distinction. Consciousness is a function, not an entity. To simulate a function is precisely to execute it. There’s no meaningful distinction whatever. (It’s the second-order distinction between simulating/executing an x86 processor in the abstract, vs simulating/executing a specific identified Intel chip product, if you like.)

Re: A Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life

#132

Post by akomtu »

hnlmorg wrote: post #100
akomtu wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do we tell when mechanistic response ends and self awareness begins? When you explain to it how it runs on electricity, and then say you're going to pull the AC cable. The concept of self awareness revolves around some object that the AI identifies with (mistakenly or not doesn't matter), so any threat to that object will be perceived as a threat to the AI's existence.

That is proof of a survival instinct rather than sentience. Plenty of humans medically lack that survival instinct and while that might be because they’re suffering from an acute medical condition, there’s no reason to assume that all other sentience has to develop that same instinct just because us biological beings evolved one to survive.

Trying to produce distilled smartness (AI) is like trying to extract waterness from water. Desire to exist, desire to understand (intelligence) and desire to act (will) come together in one package.

Re: A Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life

#133

Post by [deleted] »

swid wrote: post #86
hooande wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consciousness is the result of billions of years of random chance in the form of evolution. We can simulate a nuclear reaction, but our minds can't even conceive of the time scale of a billion years or any of the associated concepts. "We can do one complicated thing, therefore we can do anything" is a shaky basis for beliefs. It's possible that multiplying matrices can replicate a couple of billion years worth of dic…

I meant something else. If you can perfectly simulate a rock, as it exists in reality, you can also simulate a brain. The universe doesn’t care that the brain produces thoughts. Thoughts are an emergent property of the network, there is no rule in the universe to treat the brain different. So if we think we can simulate matter, with sufficiently close behavior to reality, than that is already sufficient to produce AG…

[deleted]

Re: A Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life

#135

Post by k__ »

samhw wrote: post #126
k__ wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read, the Chinese Room idea has too many assumptions to be useful.

Really? I read that your comment is wrong.

Yes, really.

The argument is, that anything resembling a chinese room is such an advanced and complex system that it becomes indistinguishable from an actual conscious being.

Re: A Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life

#136

Post by Konohamaru »

threefourteen wrote: post #64
jonnycomputer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why?

Because his background strongly suggests that he's far from scientifically objective when it comes to sentience. On another note maybe he saw an opportunity for his 15 minutes of fame here. My personal experience with religious (Christian) young people is that they find it very hard to control their special narcissisms. Very hard to even recognize them as such as they masquerade behind false humbleness and ethics and…

> My personal experience with religious (Christian) young people is that they find it very hard to control their special narcissism.

American Christianity is absolutely not reflective of historical Christianity, especially not in its theology. If you want to see a good take-down of American Christianity, read Samuel Clemens.

And no, American Christianity did not change one bit since the time Mr. Clemens flourished (mid-late 19th century).

Re: A Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life

#137

Post by seba_dos1 »

dbingham wrote: post #52

With the preface that I'm not convinced LaMBDA is there based on this article, this did get me wondering how we'd even tell. If we do achieve a chat bot that can convincingly respond in a human way, 100% of the time, how do we tell whether it has achieved sentience or not? How do we tell when mechanistic response ends and self awareness begins? I mean, we already struggle to tell when animals have self awareness and…

> We have something that can talk intelligently, but might be doing it mechanistically. ...how do we even tell in that case?

But how do we tell that our own intelligence isn't actually purely mechanical?

Re: A Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life

#138

Post by seba_dos1 »

antonvs wrote: post #128
swid wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not suggesting we can do this today (no universal theory), and I'm not suggesting it is practical in the sense that we can simulate that much amount of matter in a certain amount of time. But I think it's theoretically possible. There is also the question about how much simulation would be necessary to get approximately real life results that includes consciousness -There was a very detailed simulation of a cell[…

> But I think it's theoretically possible. That's an unsubstantiated belief, though. If we simulate a rock right down to the quantum level - not even remotely possible with foreseeable technology, but let's assume it is - you don't end up with an actual rock in the physical universe. You end up with a model of a rock. There are important properties that it's missing due to not having a direct physical embodiment beyo…

> You can't bash someone in the head with it in the physical world, for example.

You can bash someone in the head with it in the simulated world though, and if you simulate that person's head well enough it will be just as painful for them as it would be for a real world person.

Re: A Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life

#139

Post by hnlmorg »

akomtu wrote: post #132
hnlmorg wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is proof of a survival instinct rather than sentience. Plenty of humans medically lack that survival instinct and while that might be because they’re suffering from an acute medical condition, there’s no reason to assume that all other sentience has to develop that same instinct just because us biological beings evolved one to survive.

Trying to produce distilled smartness (AI) is like trying to extract waterness from water. Desire to exist, desire to understand (intelligence) and desire to act (will) come together in one package.

I doubt that personally. The real issue is that terms we use for intelligence, sentience, etc are all subjective. So what one might consider intelligent another might not. And thus we might never agree that something is sentient even long after we have androids serving on star ships (as has been a well discussed topic in TNG).
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