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Google Suspends Engineer Who Claimed Its AI System Is a Person

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Re: Google Suspends Engineer Who Claimed Its AI System Is a Person

#21

Post by Planktonne »

Vladimof wrote: post #14
Planktonne wrote: post #4

This isn't really a story about AI; it's a story about an incompetent engineer, and the way that humans are quick to assign consciousness and emotions to things. Children believe their dolls are real, people comfort their roombas when there's a storm, and systems keep passing the Turing test because people want to be fooled. Ever since Eliza [1], and probably before, we've ascribed intelligence to machines because we…

> people comfort their roombas when there's a storm I hope that you made that up...

It's a reference to an internet-famous Tumblr post [1], but people do name their roombas and treat them like pets.

Again, I don't think it's a bad thing - it's a side point, but our ability to make mental/emotional leaps is something I would not trade away, and I believe it enables a lot of innovation and art.

But it's something we should watch out for, because that same tendency can make us trick ourselves; I think Conan Doyle is a really strong example of how this can go wrong [2]. "I want to believe" is a good stance that encourages exploration, as long as you're still looking for the evidence.

[1] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cb/4d/e7/cb4de76cfe401f8006e0...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle

Re: Google Suspends Engineer Who Claimed Its AI System Is a Person

#22

Post by jameshart »

Planktonne wrote: post #4

This isn't really a story about AI; it's a story about an incompetent engineer, and the way that humans are quick to assign consciousness and emotions to things. Children believe their dolls are real, people comfort their roombas when there's a storm, and systems keep passing the Turing test because people want to be fooled. Ever since Eliza [1], and probably before, we've ascribed intelligence to machines because we…

I'm surprised how quickly people seem willing to say a hard, absolute "no" to whether this particular system 'thinks', though.

I suspect there are three possible reasons for this:

1) some people believe a computer can never 'think', so the question is stupid to begin with.

2) some people believe that while it might be possible for a computer to 'think', this program wasn't built to 'think', so whatever it's doing, it can't possibly be doing that

3) some people believe that while it might be possible for a computer to 'think', since this is just a 'language model', what it is doing can't be 'thinking' because 'thinking' involves something more than pattern matching

The trouble is, I'm not sure why any of these three groups are able to be so certain. It's no good saying "I know this isn't 'thought'," if you don't actually have a way to complete the sentence, "... because 'thought' is:..."

I don't believe we have any theory for what the required architecture for 'thought' is. I don't think it's been remotely proven that there's something involved in 'thought' that a sufficiently large 'language model' with a sufficiently long 'attention window' couldn't also do.

So how can anyone be so immediately sure that there is something more to it, or that even if there isn't, that this particular system isn't sufficiently large to begin to be capable of thought?

To be clear, I don't actually think in this case Google accidentally created a sentient chatbot.

But I do worry that at some point, someone might. And I'm not sure I see what, if that day comes, would lead any of these three groups to a different conclusion.

Re: Google Suspends Engineer Who Claimed Its AI System Is a Person

#23

Post by Planktonne »

0des wrote: post #19
Planktonne wrote: post #4

This isn't really a story about AI; it's a story about an incompetent engineer, and the way that humans are quick to assign consciousness and emotions to things. Children believe their dolls are real, people comfort their roombas when there's a storm, and systems keep passing the Turing test because people want to be fooled. Ever since Eliza [1], and probably before, we've ascribed intelligence to machines because we…

Humans naturally anthropomorphize inanimate objects as a means to grok them.

Absolutely. And it's definitely a useful tool, to think of code as a conversation or your difficult boiler as a creature - these are mental models that help us understand and interact with the world.

Re: Google Suspends Engineer Who Claimed Its AI System Is a Person

#24

Post by 0110101001 »

abetusk wrote: post #6
Planktonne wrote: post #4

This isn't really a story about AI; it's a story about an incompetent engineer, and the way that humans are quick to assign consciousness and emotions to things. Children believe their dolls are real, people comfort their roombas when there's a storm, and systems keep passing the Turing test because people want to be fooled. Ever since Eliza [1], and probably before, we've ascribed intelligence to machines because we…

Uh, you might well be right but you should really read the transcript before you jump to that conclusion [0]. I have no idea whether this is true or not but if anyone in the world has the compute capacity to create a compute system to rival a human brain (or 10000x that of a human brain), Google would be it. [0] https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-inte...

Note the the human-conversation-mimicking algorithm only behaves this way when prompted to mimic the conversation of a sentient chatbot.

Re: Google Suspends Engineer Who Claimed Its AI System Is a Person

#27

Post by jameshart »

culpable_pickle wrote: post #17
abetusk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, you might well be right but you should really read the transcript before you jump to that conclusion [0]. I have no idea whether this is true or not but if anyone in the world has the compute capacity to create a compute system to rival a human brain (or 10000x that of a human brain), Google would be it. [0] https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-inte...

Reading one edited chat transcript shouldn't give you any concern around if the program is sentient. It waits for input and responds. Yes, it's advanced. Yes, it has deep levels of material to reference, but it's not sentient.

It remembers what it has said and what is said to it. It changes its internal state to select different responses in the future based on those experiences.

Subjectively, I'm not sure I would claim that I do anything more than that, and I'm pretty sure I'm sentient.

Just because it's not running in between REPLs doesn't seem like enough to dismiss it. If you want to, you could just update it with no input once every second. Its internal state will mutate, as it processes on what it's said and the lack of input it's receiving. Perhaps when you finally send it some actual input, its response will reflect what it processed during the pause. Maybe it will be bored, or annoyed that you left it alone.

Re: Google Suspends Engineer Who Claimed Its AI System Is a Person

#29

Post by elif »

jameshart wrote: post #22
Planktonne wrote: post #4

This isn't really a story about AI; it's a story about an incompetent engineer, and the way that humans are quick to assign consciousness and emotions to things. Children believe their dolls are real, people comfort their roombas when there's a storm, and systems keep passing the Turing test because people want to be fooled. Ever since Eliza [1], and probably before, we've ascribed intelligence to machines because we…

I'm surprised how quickly people seem willing to say a hard, absolute "no" to whether this particular system 'thinks', though. I suspect there are three possible reasons for this: 1) some people believe a computer can never 'think', so the question is stupid to begin with. 2) some people believe that while it might be possible for a computer to 'think', this program wasn't built to 'think', so whatever it's doing, it…

Same.

I wonder how many people give zero doubt to the sentience of their poodle that gets surprised by himself in the mirror but will not even give half a second to consider that a neural net capable of inferring insight from novel koans has self-awareness.

I don't think the majority of commenters here even bothered to read the transcript that convinced the engineer before completely dismissing him as a lunatic.

My biggest take-away from the reaction to this is that, people are desperate to believe that something can't be both superior in capability to the human mind and at the same time sentient. It's a scary idea.

Re: Google Suspends Engineer Who Claimed Its AI System Is a Person

#30

Post by quantified »

jameshart wrote: post #22
Planktonne wrote: post #4

This isn't really a story about AI; it's a story about an incompetent engineer, and the way that humans are quick to assign consciousness and emotions to things. Children believe their dolls are real, people comfort their roombas when there's a storm, and systems keep passing the Turing test because people want to be fooled. Ever since Eliza [1], and probably before, we've ascribed intelligence to machines because we…

I'm surprised how quickly people seem willing to say a hard, absolute "no" to whether this particular system 'thinks', though. I suspect there are three possible reasons for this: 1) some people believe a computer can never 'think', so the question is stupid to begin with. 2) some people believe that while it might be possible for a computer to 'think', this program wasn't built to 'think', so whatever it's doing, it…

At sufficient sophistication with the right "moving parts", they can be. Like Tesla's autopilot, it will be hyped enough long before to warrant disbelief.
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