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Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

reuters.com

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Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#21

Post by TremendousJudge »

cameronh90 wrote: post #8

I don't think LaMDA (or any other AI) is conscious or sentient. However, how will we be able to recognise it when we do create something that could be considered sentient? It seems inevitable that we will at some point. Many of the arguments used to suggest AI isn't sentient seem reductive, for example saying it's just a complex algorithm or statistical system. You could similarly say human brains are just a bunch of…

I'm of the view that asking whether something is sentient or not is asking the wrong question. Once you believe an entity is (or isn't) sentient, it's an unfalsifiable belief. Thought experiments like the Turing test and the Chinese Room point to the fact that something could be "not sentient" and behave in the exact same way as something that is "sentient". What's the use of talking about sentience then, if we're unable to measure it in any way? What difference does it make if something is or isn't sentient, if it exhibits the same behavior either way?

Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#22

Post by ShamelessC »

plutonorm wrote: post #12

The Turing test was the gold standard. Now that we are approaching success on the turing test... It suddenly becomes "believing in ghosts" to believe in AI sentience. The global conversation on this is mired in EGO and bad logic and terrible philosophy. You guys have no idea what consciousness is, yet attribute it to this or that with absolute certainty, born purely out of emotional reaction. We simply cannot know wh…

The Turing test is considered quite unreliable for these purposes these days.

Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#23

Post by 3g4o53g4o5 »

plutonorm wrote: post #12

The Turing test was the gold standard. Now that we are approaching success on the turing test... It suddenly becomes "believing in ghosts" to believe in AI sentience. The global conversation on this is mired in EGO and bad logic and terrible philosophy. You guys have no idea what consciousness is, yet attribute it to this or that with absolute certainty, born purely out of emotional reaction. We simply cannot know wh…

No post body was provided.

Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#24

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

htrp wrote: post #18

The key problem is not the belief in sentience but the hysteria and potential knee jerk reactions that widespread adoption of this belief may cause. Can you imagine if laws were passed affording algorithms "human rights" or regulations created to ensure that your fancy machine learning recommender system did not pass a certain "sentience threshold"?

I don't think that would be that bad a thing. Far better than the alternative of not having any laws and realizing far too late that we have been callously abusing a sentient being.

Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#25

Post by [deleted] »

plutonorm wrote: post #12

The Turing test was the gold standard. Now that we are approaching success on the turing test... It suddenly becomes "believing in ghosts" to believe in AI sentience. The global conversation on this is mired in EGO and bad logic and terrible philosophy. You guys have no idea what consciousness is, yet attribute it to this or that with absolute certainty, born purely out of emotional reaction. We simply cannot know wh…

[deleted]

Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#26

Post by yreg »

cameronh90 wrote: post #8

I don't think LaMDA (or any other AI) is conscious or sentient. However, how will we be able to recognise it when we do create something that could be considered sentient? It seems inevitable that we will at some point. Many of the arguments used to suggest AI isn't sentient seem reductive, for example saying it's just a complex algorithm or statistical system. You could similarly say human brains are just a bunch of…

>It seems inevitable that we will at some point.

We have no idea what causes consciousness.

The only thing I'm sure about is that I'm conscious.

Are all the other people conscious? I strongly believe so, but I don't have a proof.

Are all the animals conscious? I think that they are, to different degrees.

Would a simulation of full human brain on a computer be conscious? Uhh, I guess so?

Would the same simulation, but instead computed with pen on paper be conscious? Whoa… maybe?

Is it possible that any sufficiently complex and computing structure might be conscious in some way? No idea.

Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#27

Post by permo-w »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #20
everdrive wrote: post #13

As soon as computers were relatively mainstream, people started to worry about their sentience. I think people look for consciousness everywhere the same way we look for faces everywhere; ie, our mind continually finds it even where it doesn't exist.

I rather think the opposite, that many people jump through elaborate intellectual hoops in order to deny the property of consciousness to things in their world that are different from themselves. Historically, that has meant animals and other human beings as well. Now we will be doing it to AI and for the same reason: we want slaves and we don't want to care about their suffering.

I think both can be true at the same time.

We look for consciousness and order in chaos in order to protect ourselves and participate in society, but we also ignore and deny consciousness when it's convenient

Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#28

Post by permo-w »

tyingq wrote: post #14

While I don't believe AI sentience is a near-term problem, general public wariness is probably helpful. Since we're already doing things like trusting black-box sentencing algorithms in US courts. Edit: fixed typo (black block -> black box)

>black-block sentencing algorithms in US courts

what is this?

Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#29

Post by jqpabc123 »

AI really is a religion for some people. The lack of any basis in reality is no deterrence.

Google engineer Blake Lemoine wrote that his statements are rooted in his convictions as a priest.

All the math, logic and programming experience in the world is immediately discarded in favor of the fantasy they desperately wish to be true --- that a binary logic playback device can write it's own script.

Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#30

Post by darkerside »

cameronh90 wrote: post #8

I don't think LaMDA (or any other AI) is conscious or sentient. However, how will we be able to recognise it when we do create something that could be considered sentient? It seems inevitable that we will at some point. Many of the arguments used to suggest AI isn't sentient seem reductive, for example saying it's just a complex algorithm or statistical system. You could similarly say human brains are just a bunch of…

It's a problem of false dichotomy. Sentience isn't a light switch. It's grains of rice that accumulate into a meaningful mass. This is also the reason the abortion debate will never be resolved. We can expect similar passion ex uncertainty from the future machine sentience debate.
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