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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

#141

Post by astrange »

arcturus17 wrote: post #33
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?

Is there really a difference between commonplace logic, advanced logic, and otherwise? Logic is logic, if there ever was a tautology...

Yes, formal logic (rationality) and informal logic (reasonableness) are not actually the same thing and can't replace each other; logic works in its own world (which has finite/enumerable factors) and reasonableness works in the real world (which doesn't). This was tried several times under "logical positivism", "AI expert systems", and "rationalism", all of which were failures. Some people haven't noticed the last two failed and are still trying to do them though.

See: https://metarationality.com

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#142

Post by atlasunshrugged »

dekhn wrote: post #117
noncoml wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Trust me bro” is not a reliable source, no matter I how important or famous someone is. Edit: believing one’s anecdotal story is different to accepting the original assertion of the OP as true. Not saying they are lying, just take it with a pinch of salt.

Feel free to disbelieve me. But I think I got a pretty good read on the situation having talked to a wide range of the original players and a fair number of xooglers and googlers who frequent this site have probably interacted with the old leadership enough times to know what their real motivations were.

Have you kept up with them? I know Deepmind is still a leader in the space and part of Alphabet now but I never hear much about Larry engaging in AI work (I hear much more about Sergey's airship or Schmidt's efforts warning the U.S. about a rising China).

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#143

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#144

Post by throwaway287391 »

whatshisface wrote: post #62
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #29

> So, it’s regrettable that despite lengthy engagement on this topic, Blake still chose to persistently violate clear employment and data security policies that include the need to safeguard product information. We will continue our careful development of language models, and we wish Blake well.” You can't expect to be employed by a company while simultaneously building a personal brand around publicly criticizing th…

> It also becomes difficult to trust someone when their position stops being one of (supposed) moral responsibility and starts becoming a source of fame, celebrity, and access to influential podcast/media circles that were previously out of reach. If you use known-good whistleblowers of the past as a reference, does that filter stand up? You've come up with a catch-22 where you will only listen to whistleblowers you…

Might be wrong but I thought GP meant "It becomes difficult for the employer to trust the whistleblowing employee when...", not that the public couldn't trust the whistleblower. You can think Edward Snowden did something good+heroic while also thinking the NSA couldn't reasonably have kept him on their payroll.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#145

Post by quinnjh »

kareemsabri wrote: post #42
jeffparsons wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "practitioner of the field" counts for much in this case. In reading his open letter, it was pretty apparent that he'd well and truly crossed over from thinking about the situation rationally into the realm of "I want to believe". If you ask enough practitioners in any given field the same question, you're nearly guaranteed to eventually get a super wonky response from one of them. The specific field do…

Yeah that's fair, I guess if you hire enough engineers one of them will eventually believe AI is magic.

Is magic not also deception?

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#147

Post by bobthechef »

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)

No post body was provided.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#148

Post by lisper »

dekhn wrote: post #98
woodruffw wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a relatively famous (maybe the most famous?) quote by a relatively famous philosopher[1]. Insofar as anything can be a philosophical utterance, I think it qualifies :-) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito,_ergo_sum

Of course I know the source of the statement. It's not a philosophical statement. Please define think, and am, first. Remember, Descartes spent a lot of time positing that the mind and the brain were distinct, and that the mind was non-corporeal, non-physical, non-matter. Not super-convincing to me (whereas I think what he had to say about the Great Deceiver poses a huge challenge to those who believe that humans can…

I think I think, therefore I think I am (I think). :-)

(Not original with me but it has been so long since I first saw this that I don’t remember the source. It was part of a longer dialog.)

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#150

Post by FpUser »

spacephysics wrote: post #114
psi75 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe all this, and it's terrifying. If AI emerges in the private sector (and therefore under the control of rich people) we might as well give up on the entire human experiment, because the AI will be put toward malevolent ends and we, as a species, shall fail. The good news is that we probably won't see AGI for at least 50 years. There's a decent chance of capitalism being over by then.

The capitalism that’s lifted more people out of poverty than any other system in human history. Hopefully it’s not over.

It did and the best time has passed. Right now we have rich getting richer poor getting poorer and middle class evaporating. The way it works it may no longer serve the purpose. Not like there is any viable alternative. We have finite resources and ever growing population. Unless these factors are mitigated somehow (dirt cheap infinite energy for example) we do not have much to look forward to.
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