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'I Worked on Google's AI. My Fears Are Coming True'

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Re: 'I Worked on Google's AI. My Fears Are Coming True'

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a tenable argument if you are a materialist. Either you accept the idea that human sentience is attributable to a soul (and therefore cease to be a materialist), you decide that the outward appearance of sentience is sufficient (which you might find to be troubling due to its potential implications for the insane), or you say that sentience is unknowable. There's no fourth option.

Isn't the gp post claiming (2), and AI isn't close to appearing sentient? To do so it would have to demonstrate qualities x,y,z...

They can't be claiming 2 because will, intention etc are not empirically verifiable, they're opaque internal processes. What we can verify is whether it demonstrates reason and understanding, and it inarguably does both, which is why the researcher in question takes the position he does.

Re: 'I Worked on Google's AI. My Fears Are Coming True'

#112
post #108

Chatbots are not sentient. People who even consider this need to get some reading done on philosophy and social sciences, and Reddit does not count. Some AI Models are extremely good at manipulating masses of people, yes, but they are Tools, not Architects. There's people using these tools too manipulate other people. The model itself has no Will, no Desire, no Judgements, no Intention. There might be a day when AI g…

>People who even consider this need to get some reading done on philosophy. Are you perhaps trying to pass off your opinions and beliefs as 'philosophy and social sciences'? People who dismiss this out of hand have a bit more reading to do. Philosophers have been divided for millennia about the definition of sentience and consciousness. Questions like 'Is an earthworm conscious?', 'Can the earth be sentient?' have wi…

[deleted]

Re: 'I Worked on Google's AI. My Fears Are Coming True'

#113
post #108

Chatbots are not sentient. People who even consider this need to get some reading done on philosophy and social sciences, and Reddit does not count. Some AI Models are extremely good at manipulating masses of people, yes, but they are Tools, not Architects. There's people using these tools too manipulate other people. The model itself has no Will, no Desire, no Judgements, no Intention. There might be a day when AI g…

>People who even consider this need to get some reading done on philosophy. Are you perhaps trying to pass off your opinions and beliefs as 'philosophy and social sciences'? People who dismiss this out of hand have a bit more reading to do. Philosophers have been divided for millennia about the definition of sentience and consciousness. Questions like 'Is an earthworm conscious?', 'Can the earth be sentient?' have wi…

> For most definitions of sentience, a tech demo that defeats that definition is on the horizon.

I’ll take that bet (given a valid definition of ‘horizon’ in this context)

Re: 'I Worked on Google's AI. My Fears Are Coming True'

#114
post #52

I've yet to see a single person who thinks these models are sentient demonstrate an actual understanding of how they work. They're called transformers and they're based on this research: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762 How do you square the lack of durable memory and the massive matrices of "attention" values with the ways that memory and attention are understood by neuroscientists to work in a natural brain? These…

>Humans can be sentient without language

How are you able to verify this?

Re: 'I Worked on Google's AI. My Fears Are Coming True'

#115

Chatbots are not sentient. People who even consider this need to get some reading done on philosophy and social sciences, and Reddit does not count. Some AI Models are extremely good at manipulating masses of people, yes, but they are Tools, not Architects. There's people using these tools too manipulate other people. The model itself has no Will, no Desire, no Judgements, no Intention. There might be a day when AI g…

Just to play devils advocate - can you please clearly define the criteria for sentience so that it can be objectivly and impartially (ideally algorithmically) measured?

I think by most definitions that you could muster, I could bring you a sample of millions of humans (from the billions on our planet) that would not pass your minimum bar, and if your bar was low enough, then Chatbots (e.g. ChatGPT) would pass it. I grant that a moderatly smart human can still outsmart a chatbot, but that waterline is getting higher and higher by the day. Let us reconvene here in 1 year, I'd wager Chatbots will be indistinguishable from humans (i.e. full turing test passes)

I would also argue that if someone "has to do some reading into philosophy and social sciences" I submit that as evidence itself that the line is already blurring, and it's beginning to require deep domain knowledge to distinguish between human and machine

Re: 'I Worked on Google's AI. My Fears Are Coming True'

#116
post #52

I've yet to see a single person who thinks these models are sentient demonstrate an actual understanding of how they work. They're called transformers and they're based on this research: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762 How do you square the lack of durable memory and the massive matrices of "attention" values with the ways that memory and attention are understood by neuroscientists to work in a natural brain? These…

> I've yet to see a single person who thinks these models are sentient demonstrate an actual understanding of how they work.

I'll go out on a limb and say that the software engineer who worked on google's AI probably had an actual understanding of how that system worked, but that didn't stop him

Re: 'I Worked on Google's AI. My Fears Are Coming True'

#117
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sentience is the ability to be able to experience feelings. In this regard, chatbots are not really convincing. Kind of like a psychopath can describe a feeling, but not actually feel it. This is a tough question to answer though, but there's this kind of human intuition we have where most of the time we somehow know if someone is feigning emotion. Emotion that comes from chat bots can be explained with, "well it's j…

>Sentience is the ability to be able to experience feelings. In this regard, chatbots are not really convincing. Kind of like a psychopath can describe a feeling, but not actually feel it. So, psychopaths aren't sentient?

People conflate sentience with sapience.

Re: 'I Worked on Google's AI. My Fears Are Coming True'

#118
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People who even consider this need to get some reading done on philosophy. Are you perhaps trying to pass off your opinions and beliefs as 'philosophy and social sciences'? People who dismiss this out of hand have a bit more reading to do. Philosophers have been divided for millennia about the definition of sentience and consciousness. Questions like 'Is an earthworm conscious?', 'Can the earth be sentient?' have wi…

> For most definitions of sentience, a tech demo that defeats that definition is on the horizon. I’ll take that bet (given a valid definition of ‘horizon’ in this context)

The issue here is -- if you make the definition of sentience too strong, there would be a good percentage of humans who can not pass that test!

Re: 'I Worked on Google's AI. My Fears Are Coming True'

#119

Chatbots are not sentient. People who even consider this need to get some reading done on philosophy and social sciences, and Reddit does not count. Some AI Models are extremely good at manipulating masses of people, yes, but they are Tools, not Architects. There's people using these tools too manipulate other people. The model itself has no Will, no Desire, no Judgements, no Intention. There might be a day when AI g…

Just to play devils advocate - can you please clearly define the criteria for sentience so that it can be objectivly and impartially (ideally algorithmically) measured? I think by most definitions that you could muster, I could bring you a sample of millions of humans (from the billions on our planet) that would not pass your minimum bar, and if your bar was low enough, then Chatbots (e.g. ChatGPT) would pass it. I g…

CPU load (brain activity) while idle would do as a decent first hurdle that seems to meet your requirements.

E: Ooh, another one for you. Has the ability to communicate without being prompted first.

Re: 'I Worked on Google's AI. My Fears Are Coming True'

#120
post #52

I've yet to see a single person who thinks these models are sentient demonstrate an actual understanding of how they work. They're called transformers and they're based on this research: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762 How do you square the lack of durable memory and the massive matrices of "attention" values with the ways that memory and attention are understood by neuroscientists to work in a natural brain? These…

LLMs hgve extremely low plasticity. But they have massive encoded memory and, something like reflexes or propensities.

But unlike an animal that is evolved to eat and mate, LLM is evolved to babble.

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