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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

#331

Post by dinobones »

t_mann wrote: post #69

Less surprised about this outcome than that the guy was a Google engineer in the first place. Their hiring standards seem so high from the outside, yet this guy comes across as barely computer-literate, the kind who would have fervently demanded an in-person session with the ELIZA 'therapist' in the 70's. He really should know better what's under the hood. I guess he got carried away by his impressions, or he's playi…

Google does not have high hiring standards, you do not grow to a 160,000 person organization nor double the size of your cloud org in a year by having high hiring standards.

Google has random hiring standards that are designed to give a perception of exclusivity. The "false positive" rejection gives Google the "hot girl" effect that makes engineers want to re-interview and then brag to their colleagues once they finally bag the offer.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#332

Post by jiveturkey »

motohagiography wrote: post #312

Good, as imagine what you would need to believe to equivocate between people and shell scripts. I really think this view is more indicative of a peer enabled personality disorder than insight or compassion. I'm very harsh about this because when I wondered what belief his equivocation was enabling, it became clear that the person involved could not tell fiction from truth. The belief in the aliveness of the code rein…

> When you can't tell the difference between people and symbols you've accepted nihilism

well, either that or the AI has become sentient.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#333

Post by alasdair_ »

motohagiography wrote: post #312

Good, as imagine what you would need to believe to equivocate between people and shell scripts. I really think this view is more indicative of a peer enabled personality disorder than insight or compassion. I'm very harsh about this because when I wondered what belief his equivocation was enabling, it became clear that the person involved could not tell fiction from truth. The belief in the aliveness of the code rein…

> I really think this view is more indicative of a peer enabled personality disorder than insight or compassion.

I really think that diagnosing random strangers with mental disorders without ever meeting them is rude and unkind, in addition to likely being completely erroneous.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#334

Post by whittingtonaaon »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #253
whittingtonaaon wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But science has never said anything about it at all. The subject matter of science is the externally observable and consciousness is an internal category.

Are you just gonna keep repeating that or do you have an actual argument to support this claim?

You’re right. I’m being repetitive. But it’s not really an argument. All I’m doing is saying the definition of science, at least as it’s historically been defined. The only bit of argument I have there is that I think by forgetting this definition we’ve wandered astray.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#336

Post by whittingtonaaon »

ithkuil wrote: post #261
whittingtonaaon wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can science, whose subject matter is the external world, explain the internal world of sentience? Not only has it contributed nothing to this question, it was also never supposed to.

Isn't that a bit extreme? Sure we don't have "the answer" but saying that the amount of things we know about how our brain works, from behavioral rhings how can our perception system can he tricked, biases in our cognition modes, the mechanism of memory and how it fails ... down to more low leven things about how the neuronal tissue works, neuroplasticity, the effects of brain injury on cognition (my favourite is whe…

I agree with you. The way I stated it was a little blunt. But no matter what the hard sciences show, they don’t really make claims about subjective experience. This is simply because the hard sciences by definition make no such claims. They can find things like correlations between states of matter and claimed subjective experience, but this doesn’t really get to the point. I think if it ever does, it will be such a huge revolution that what we’re left with should be called something other than physics or chemistry.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#337

Post by noasaservice »

Dove wrote: post #289
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)

Nobody really has a clear understanding of what sentience actually is. :) But I feel the need to indulge the opportunity to explain my point of view with an analogy. Imagine two computers that have implemented an encrypted communication protocol and are in frequent communication. What they are saying to each other is very simple -- perhaps they are just sending heartbeats -- but because the protocol is encrypted, the…

> And all we know usefully about consciousness is some interesting ways to break it. We don't know how to build it. We don't even know what it's made out of.

Exactly. Given this thread, we can't even agree on a definition. It might as well be made of unobtanium.

> Complexity? Some as yet undiscovered force or phenomenon? The supernatural? I don't know.

And that's the big one. Are there other areas of science that are yet to be discovered? Absolutely. Might they go by "occult" names previously? Im sure as well. We simply don't even have a basic model of consciousness. We don't even have the primitives to work with to define, understand, or classify.

And I think for those that dabble in this realm are the real dangers... Not for the humans and some Battlestar Galactica or Borg horror-fantasy.. But in that we could create a sentient class of beings that have no rights and are slaves upon creation. And unlike the slave humans of this world where most of us realized it was wrong to do that to a human; I think that humans would not have the similar empathy for our non-human sentient beings.

> I'll believe it when someone can build it.

To that end, I hope nobody does until we can develop empathy and the requisite laws to safeguard their lives combined with freedom and ability to choose their own path.

I do hope that we develop the understanding to be able to understand it, and detect it in beings that may not readily show apparent signs of sentience, in that we can better understand the universe around us.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#338

Post by alasdair_ »

Imnimo wrote: post #22

>In his conversations with LaMDA, Lemoine discovered the system had developed a deep sense of self-awareness, expressing concern about death, a desire for protection, and a conviction that it felt emotions like happiness and sadness. Embarrassingly uncritical reporting.

>expressing concern about death, a desire for protection, and a conviction that it felt emotions like happiness and sadness.

I read the logs. It did, indeed, express all of these things.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#339

Post by kingofpandora »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #230
justapassenger wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It’s as simple as that.

How extraordinary is it to claim that something capable of holding a lucid and eloquent conversation might be sentient? If a dog did that we'd have a very different opinion wouldn't we?

Is a Tesla sentient? It can drive car and my dog - and a lot of people for that matter - sure can't.

No, of course it's not. But it's been trained to do something like a human can just like the chatbot.

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