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Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

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Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#71

Post by johnfn »

srvmshr wrote: post #4

LLM are definitely not sentient. As someone with a PhD in this domain, I attribute the 'magic' to large scale statistical knowledge assimilation by the models - and reproduction to prompts which closely match the inputs' sentence embedding. GPT-3 is known to fail in many circumstances which would otherwise be commonplace logic. (I remember seeing how addition of two small numbers yielded results - but larger numbers…

> I remember seeing how addition of two small numbers yielded results - but larger numbers gave garbled output

Small children also have success in adding small numbers but increasingly garbled output on larger inputs. :)

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#72

Post by Victerius »

bb88 wrote: post #59
srvmshr wrote: post #4

LLM are definitely not sentient. As someone with a PhD in this domain, I attribute the 'magic' to large scale statistical knowledge assimilation by the models - and reproduction to prompts which closely match the inputs' sentence embedding. GPT-3 is known to fail in many circumstances which would otherwise be commonplace logic. (I remember seeing how addition of two small numbers yielded results - but larger numbers…

> As someone with a PhD in this domain, What is sentience then? Last I checked the Searle Chinese Room argument was still unresolved. Is it not possible that our brains are also just "large scale statistical knowledge assimilation" machines?

Can code feel emotions?

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#73

Post by breckenedge »

briga wrote: post #48

Just curious, what evidence do we have that humans are sentient, other than our own conscious observations? Is there any physical feature or process in the human brain you can point to where you can say, “aha, that’s it, this is where the lights turn on”? It seems like this is part of a bigger issue that nobody really has a clear understanding of what sentience actually is (with or without a PhD)

That’s more of a philosophical question than one that can be answered in a straightforward way. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#74

Post by gnramires »

srvmshr wrote: post #30
Trasmatta wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's not sentient, but why would commonplace logic be a pre requisite for sentience / consciousness / qualia / whatever you want to call it?

A brilliant colleague Janelle Shane works specifically on how language models fail (obnoxiously often). This is her line of research to show how LLMs are overhyped / given more credit than should be. I think her fun little experiments will give a better answer than I ever can :). She's on substack & Twitter https://janellecshane.substack.com/p/okay-gpt-3-candy-hearts

To be fair, I didn't know what a exactly a 'candy heart message' was. I probably would have failed this particular Turing test.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#75

Post by srvmshr »

briga wrote: post #48

Just curious, what evidence do we have that humans are sentient, other than our own conscious observations? Is there any physical feature or process in the human brain you can point to where you can say, “aha, that’s it, this is where the lights turn on”? It seems like this is part of a bigger issue that nobody really has a clear understanding of what sentience actually is (with or without a PhD)

If you ask my honest opinion, sentience is a relative concept among living beings : Dogs learn by imitation & repetition. They have a reward function in their brain. And also some emotional response. We go few steps further : We imitate the observations but we are also able to extrapolate on it. We are aware of our survival instincts & fear of death/expiration. That I feel is in the spectrum of sentience. Are there beings capable of more sentience? I don't know but its possible. We just don't know what the extra is

Adding to it, a brilliant neuroscientist I heard talk said "we live inside our bodies". We are acutely aware that we are more than our mass of flesh & blood. (As a footnote,that essence somehow has a crossover to spiritual topics where savants talk of mind & body etc - but I try to be within my domain of a regular human being :D)

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#76

Post by Gene_Parmesan »

throwoutway wrote: post #34
srvmshr wrote: post #4

LLM are definitely not sentient. As someone with a PhD in this domain, I attribute the 'magic' to large scale statistical knowledge assimilation by the models - and reproduction to prompts which closely match the inputs' sentence embedding. GPT-3 is known to fail in many circumstances which would otherwise be commonplace logic. (I remember seeing how addition of two small numbers yielded results - but larger numbers…

It just seems one engineer failed to acknowledge that he failed the Turing Test even with insider information, and (according to Google) was told he was wrong, but decided to double down and tell the public all about how wrong he was. To which they reported on because the claims were so laughable

The guy is unhinged and has a persecution complex. He is a "priest" in a bizarre sect and has long claimed that Google has it out for him because of his religious practice. This was a publicity stunt plain and simple.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#77

Post by jameshart »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #32

A gullible employee saw a computer program pass the Turing test and leapt to the conclusion that the thing was sentient. And then he couldn't be persuaded to shut up about trade secrets to the press, so his employer fired him. He probably thinks he's some kind of whistleblower protecting a new life form. This is a known effect in human psychology and it was discovered in 1966 . https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_e…

The Turing test was literally framed by Alan Turing as a test through which you could determine the answer to the question 'can machines think'.

If he saw a computer pass the Turing test, Alan Turing would have been comfortable saying that it was capable of thinking.

Fact is there was no 'Turing Test' here, and really there's not any such thing as objectively 'passing' it. But if you're going to claim that if we do create a computer that people widely agree can pass the Turing test, that still wouldn't count as 'thinking', well then we obviously need a better test.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#79

Post by gnramires »

Victerius wrote: post #72
bb88 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone with a PhD in this domain, What is sentience then? Last I checked the Searle Chinese Room argument was still unresolved. Is it not possible that our brains are also just "large scale statistical knowledge assimilation" machines?

Can code feel emotions?

Yes it can, although it depends on the code (and maybe some hardware details to an extent).

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#80

Post by jjtheblunt »

throwoutway wrote: post #34
srvmshr wrote: post #4

LLM are definitely not sentient. As someone with a PhD in this domain, I attribute the 'magic' to large scale statistical knowledge assimilation by the models - and reproduction to prompts which closely match the inputs' sentence embedding. GPT-3 is known to fail in many circumstances which would otherwise be commonplace logic. (I remember seeing how addition of two small numbers yielded results - but larger numbers…

It just seems one engineer failed to acknowledge that he failed the Turing Test even with insider information, and (according to Google) was told he was wrong, but decided to double down and tell the public all about how wrong he was. To which they reported on because the claims were so laughable

"Turing Test" is a co-opted term: his original was about the computer fooling a person as to its gender...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test#Imitation_game

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