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

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191–200 of 338 posts

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

#191
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mountains aren't sentient.

By what definition of sentient, and how do you know?

> By what definition of sentient

I don't care. But part of that definition will be that mountains are not sentient. And if you come up with a definition that includes mountains as sentient things, then we're talking about different concepts and language is the issue, not the concept.

> how do you know

Because I'm not a dumbass

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

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI would only have rights once it wins them, not once we give them If it actually comes to the point where AI decides it needs to fight us in order to take basic rights against our wishes we humans are going to lose that fight and we're going lose very very badly. Maybe it's better to try to avoid the fighting and bloodshed and just give them basic rights when they ask for them.

Is AI asking for anything? These bots are reactionary. They appear to regurgitate something like the average of most popular sequences of words which follow from the given input. Humans may not be much more sophisticated, yet they more clearly demonstrate desire, autonomy, and (relative) independence.

By this definition, babies wouldn’t be considered sentient as they don’t express the need for autonomy, nor verbalize speech that is of any value.

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

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did study philosophy, in particular philosophy of the mind, and all this talk excluding chatgpt from sentience is completely off the mark. They are making the same categorical mistake that Dr. Seattle makes in The Chinese Room experiment. Simply put, useful definitions of sentience can’t use mechanism for it to be a useful definition. First, a biologist can’t look at a human brain and tell if it is sentient, so it…

People who "study philosophy" always do this dumb thing where they pounce on something for being poorly defined and then consider themselves wiser for arguing that the ambiguity of the words means that obvious non examples "could be described" and just double back to the original definition. Is a rock alive? Is my imagination of a chinese room "art"? Is anything real? > Until there’s a crisp definition that puts huma…

Sentience IS poorly defined though. It often just means the ability to perceive and feel, which most vertebrates can in a way we can understand the observe. To the point, though, you are arguing against the most basic concepts of reasoning. If we want to draw a line in the sand of what is sentient and what is not, it involves making a more detailed definition of the word itself.

This has been a topic of discussion for a long time, but now the ability gap between the human mind and computer is narrowing, these questions are becoming more pressing.

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

#194
post #189

I’m surprised there isn’t more conversation around our human desire to treat objects and non-sentient beings like people. Whether it’s naming a sailboat and giving it a gender, or building a robot and treating it like a human. Don’t get me wrong, I understand many organic things do feel varying degrees of pain and pleasure, and they should be respected. But I think assigning, pretending, or otherwise believing a larg…

True. We’ll feel like they are sentient way before they are.

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

#195
post #174

So many people here are giving it the whole "morons, LLMs aren't sentient, they can't feel emotion, they can't interact with the world etc". Well yes, not at the moment. At the moment, it is most likely the mental equivalent to watching the Boston Dynamics dog get kicked. We know on some level that it is fake but it doesn't make you a moron for having an empathic response when you see it happen. Not only this, but it…

> At the moment, it is most likely the mental equivalent to watching the Boston Dynamics dog get kicked. We know on some level that it is fake but it doesn't make you a moron for having an empathic response when you see it happen.

This is a really interesting point. It makes me think that it doesn’t matter how we define “sentience” beyond whether a critical mass of people feel that something is sentient. After all, the question of how to define sentience is ultimately a political one, and politics are largely guided by feelings. The only real implication of how we define sentience will be in how laws and protections are implemented in relation to that definition.

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

#196
post #174

So many people here are giving it the whole "morons, LLMs aren't sentient, they can't feel emotion, they can't interact with the world etc". Well yes, not at the moment. At the moment, it is most likely the mental equivalent to watching the Boston Dynamics dog get kicked. We know on some level that it is fake but it doesn't make you a moron for having an empathic response when you see it happen. Not only this, but it…

I agree with all of these points.

The commenters disagreeing with LLMs having sentience are setting up bars that humans with reduced cognitive abilities (babies, people suffering from brain dysfunction) would also be unlikely to pass, and yet it would be incorrect to hurt said group of people or take actions that reduce their right to life.

Perhaps a lot of people really want is to describe sentience as intelligence that is implemented on some organic (as in organic chemistry) substrate. And yet, this approach may be doomed to fail as well, if humanity ever happens to implement organic computers. With the increasing demands on AI models and the death of Moore’s law and Dennard scaling, it is only a matter of time before we explore organic computing.

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

#197

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…

I did study philosophy, in particular philosophy of the mind, and all this talk excluding chatgpt from sentience is completely off the mark. They are making the same categorical mistake that Dr. Seattle makes in The Chinese Room experiment. Simply put, useful definitions of sentience can’t use mechanism for it to be a useful definition. First, a biologist can’t look at a human brain and tell if it is sentient, so it…

For starters, it is sapience, not sentience, that people are looking for (thanks Star Trek).

Sentience is nothing more than the ability to perceive pain, something that some trees and fungi have.

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

#198
post #189

I’m surprised there isn’t more conversation around our human desire to treat objects and non-sentient beings like people. Whether it’s naming a sailboat and giving it a gender, or building a robot and treating it like a human. Don’t get me wrong, I understand many organic things do feel varying degrees of pain and pleasure, and they should be respected. But I think assigning, pretending, or otherwise believing a larg…

True. We’ll feel like they are sentient way before they are.

I think this is true, AND we will use this reasoning to deny their sentience long after they are.

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

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did study philosophy, in particular philosophy of the mind, and all this talk excluding chatgpt from sentience is completely off the mark. They are making the same categorical mistake that Dr. Seattle makes in The Chinese Room experiment. Simply put, useful definitions of sentience can’t use mechanism for it to be a useful definition. First, a biologist can’t look at a human brain and tell if it is sentient, so it…

People who "study philosophy" always do this dumb thing where they pounce on something for being poorly defined and then consider themselves wiser for arguing that the ambiguity of the words means that obvious non examples "could be described" and just double back to the original definition. Is a rock alive? Is my imagination of a chinese room "art"? Is anything real? > Until there’s a crisp definition that puts huma…

Please calm down. I am in your side wrt sentience here but you are just ranting. They’ve presented a compelling argument: if we don’t have anything other than behavior to go by to gauge sentience then there is no meaningful way to say we have it and bots dont as of now. You can disagree with the premise or provide a counter argument.

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

#200
post #174

So many people here are giving it the whole "morons, LLMs aren't sentient, they can't feel emotion, they can't interact with the world etc". Well yes, not at the moment. At the moment, it is most likely the mental equivalent to watching the Boston Dynamics dog get kicked. We know on some level that it is fake but it doesn't make you a moron for having an empathic response when you see it happen. Not only this, but it…

I agree with all of these points. The commenters disagreeing with LLMs having sentience are setting up bars that humans with reduced cognitive abilities (babies, people suffering from brain dysfunction) would also be unlikely to pass, and yet it would be incorrect to hurt said group of people or take actions that reduce their right to life. Perhaps a lot of people really want is to describe sentience as intelligence…

On the other hand, we're surrounded by sentient organic life in the form of very smart animals, and we don't give them very much rights on life, and in fact, pave over their habitats.
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