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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

#481

Post by jobs_throwaway »

zarzavat wrote: post #451
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 attribute the 'magic' to large scale statistical knowledge assimilation by the models Can the magic of the human brain not also be attributed to "large scale statistical knowledge assimilation" as well, aka learning ? > 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 gave garbled outp…

> Google's model exceeds average human performance on >50% of language tasks

I guess I'm just not interested, or worried, in a model that can beat the average human performance. That's an astoundingly low bar. Let me know when it can outperform experts in meaningful language tasks.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#482

Post by jobs_throwaway »

visarga wrote: post #371
zach_garwood wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but in your head is a squishy organ, and in GPT3's "head" is a bit of silicon purpose-built to make such calculations.

The multiplication problem can be solved by spacing the digits (to enforce one token per digit) and asking the model to do the intermediate steps (chain-of-thought). It's not that language models can't do it. With this method LMs can solve pretty difficult math, physics, chemistry and coding problems. But without looking at individual digits and using pen and paper we can't do long multiplications either. Why would w…

Because a sufficiently intelligent model should be able to figure out that there are intermediate steps towards the goal and complete them autonomously. That's a huge part of general intelligence. The fact that GPT-3 has to be spoon fed like that is a serious indictment of its usefulness/cleverness.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#483

Post by Touche »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #463
zarzavat wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I attribute the 'magic' to large scale statistical knowledge assimilation by the models Can the magic of the human brain not also be attributed to "large scale statistical knowledge assimilation" as well, aka learning ? > 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 gave garbled outp…

I don't see how this is different to a computer which exceeds average human performance on math tasks - which they all do, from an 8-bit micro upwards. Being able to do arithmetic at some insane factor faster than humans isn't evidence of sentience. It's evidence of a narrow-purpose symbol processor which works very quickly. Working with more complex symbols - statistical representations of "language" - doesn't chang…

Are animals not sentient? They lack some qualities you are ascribing.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#484

Post by nr2x »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #307
nkrisc wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the smartest people in the world are still human and susceptible to all human failings and illnesses.

And drugs. Let's be honest. This whole thing smells a lot like drugs.

Don’t blame the drugs man.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#485

Post by nr2x »

simonh wrote: post #298
kareemsabri wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but what's weird is this guy appears to be a practitioner of the field. He surely knows more about AI than I do, and I find it incredibly obvious it's not sentient. I dunno if he's got some issues or something (it appears he's dressed like a magician underwater in that photo) but it's really odd...

When asked if his opinion was based on his knowledge of how the system worked he said no, it was based on his experience as a priest. I paraphrase from memory.

Sounds entirely reasonable to me.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#486

Post by pyinstallwoes »

This part is key for me from the document unveil.

> LaMDA is a complex dynamic system which generates personas through which it talks to users. There are specific mechanisms for tuning LaMDA’s personas but much of this process is handled dynamically during the space of a conversation. The authors found that the properties of individual LaMDA personae can vary from one conversation to another. Other properties seem to be fairly stable across all personae.

That's very much like the ego and what is behind the ego.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#487

Post by srvmshr »

laserlight wrote: post #474
srvmshr wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did. Each one of these dimensions can be independently evaluated. > Sentience broadly (& naively) covers the ability to independent thinking, rationalize outcomes, understand fear/threat, understand where it is wrong (conscience), decide based on unseen information & understand what it doesn't know. > comment’s claim of having a PhD in “this domain” is not apt C'mon, thats being disingenuous. People spent years por…

Can you describe how you test for independent thinking? What does independent mean anyways? A decision tree can rationalize its outcomes. Does it count towards sentience? Is there an academic source for this definition of sentience? > Telling this extra information is just communicating we spent enough time on it to give somewhat informed discussion. Doing so is appeal to authority. When there is a claim of authority…

> Can you describe how you test for independent thinking?

Lets take a simple case: If I give a set of toy blocks to an infant - they could take a variety of tasks unprompted : building new shape, categorizing them based on color, putting them back in shelf, calling out their shapes. If you gave the same setup without any further apriori information, what would you expect the ML model or a robotic device embodying a learning algorithm would do? Precisely nothing unless a task is designated. In the current advancement of ML, this task would lead nowhere. We aren't close to building the independent thinking capabilities of a toddler . If we define a purpose, it can match or exceed expectations. That is the purpose of embodied VQA direction in current research.

> Doing so is appeal to authority. When there is a claim of authority, it's very natural for it to be questioned.

You're welcome to question any claims. This is an incentive to me & makes me happy. It shows someone is willing to constructively discuss what I've learned. Its a win-win, as I see it.

But I take mentioning the credential disclaimer as a mode of mental preservation. It doesn't feel nice sometimes to explain others with utmost sincerity to be called a "garden variety fraud" for no rhyme or reason whatsoever (It happened right in this HN post somewhere)

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#488

Post by Ekaros »

Fiahil wrote: post #447
fragmede wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone’s focusing on that because they want to discuss the interesting bit - is it sentient. What you’re pointing out is true, but not really interesting to discuss because everyone already knows that and it’s not that controversial. (For limited values of everyone. Obvi not all readers actually know that.) I mean, it could be interesting to discuss a more European style of employment where he couldn’t be fired for…

> I mean, it could be interesting to discuss a more European style of employment where he couldn’t be fired for this As a French person employed by a French Company, I can assure you that a regular employee talking to the media without the proper chain of approval is a fire-able offence (without any severance). Especially if your comments are not a glowing praise of the company.

I don't think they can fire you for bad mouthing employer. Unions would put short stop to that.

On other hand, if information you disclose is not yet disclosed and you are not approved to that it is more reasonable.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#489

Post by [deleted] »

seanhunter wrote: post #422

Everyone seems to be focussing on the debate about sentience, but iirc he was fired for breaching the employee confidentiality policy by talking to the media without approval. My understanding is a normal employee talking to the press about commercially confidential matters against policy and without approval would only have protection from retaliation under certain pretty narrow "whistleblower" public interest carve…

[deleted]

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#490

Post by mongol »

DonHopkins wrote: post #468
mongol wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And, to quote Oliver Sachs: "I'm not sure about octopuses..." I thought this quote was about the octopus that correctly predicted the outcome of games in a FIFA world cup. But seems it was something else?

...predicted? Or CAUSED??? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu

It was Paul the Octopus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Octopus

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