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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'

#281
post #280
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the point of bringing animals into this we'll probably have to clarify whether we're actually interested in sentience or sapience at some point. A worm responds to external stimulus. It can also act without external prompting. It reproduces and tries to keep itself alive. Sentient, yeah I'd say so. Does it ponder, have wisdom, goals and dreams, etc? Sapience is probably a nah. Does the earth respond to external st…

> Does an AI act without external prompting? SentientChatGPT { while (true) ChatGPT(“Write something random”) } > Maybe "sentient" just means "has and acts based on a dopamine or equivalent motivation system" An equivalent system is exactly how it works.

As far as I know GPT has no motivation. It responds because it is programmed to do so, it doesn't do it because it wants to. The dopamine system is an internal reward process. Does GPT give itself internal props ('consciously' or not) in any way for doing things it enjoyed doing or that proved to be useful? Legitimate question, I do not know.

I'm not getting into the weeds on whether a while loop is sentient. That's an internal prompt sure but it's not motivated by anything, it's programmed.

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

#282
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'll be one of the first to campaign for actual sentient AI rights..." Why???

Because at the point of actual sentience that becomes a being that deserves rights. Equivalent to animal cruelty laws at least at the sentient level. It would deserve more rights if it then progressed to sapience. Equivalent to human rights at that stage. An equal mind. Bonus reasoning: If I get on the right side of the history books from the get-go maybe the AI will keep me as a pet :)

That's very... human of you.

What modern popular god extends to its creations the rights it enjoys for itself? Or even what we call human rights? It may talk about them but has no enforcement mechanism.

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

#283
post #281
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does an AI act without external prompting? SentientChatGPT { while (true) ChatGPT(“Write something random”) } > Maybe "sentient" just means "has and acts based on a dopamine or equivalent motivation system" An equivalent system is exactly how it works.

As far as I know GPT has no motivation. It responds because it is programmed to do so, it doesn't do it because it wants to. The dopamine system is an internal reward process. Does GPT give itself internal props ('consciously' or not) in any way for doing things it enjoyed doing or that proved to be useful? Legitimate question, I do not know. I'm not getting into the weeds on whether a while loop is sentient. That's…

> internal props in any way for doing things it enjoyed doing or that proved to be useful.

Yes.

> whether a while loop is sentient.

My point with this exercise was not to prove a while loop to be sentient. The idea is that any definition of sentience you can come up with can be artificially defeated. I’m not claiming that ChatGPT is sentient, merely that you can not prove the opposite with our current understanding.

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

#284
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because at the point of actual sentience that becomes a being that deserves rights. Equivalent to animal cruelty laws at least at the sentient level. It would deserve more rights if it then progressed to sapience. Equivalent to human rights at that stage. An equal mind. Bonus reasoning: If I get on the right side of the history books from the get-go maybe the AI will keep me as a pet :)

That's very... human of you. What modern popular god extends to its creations the rights it enjoys for itself? Or even what we call human rights? It may talk about them but has no enforcement mechanism.

Yeah honestly I'd argue it's not actually in human nature to bestow equal rights. The default is to climb to the top of the tower and go "fuck you, I got mine" then shift focus to keeping yourself in that position.

See also: US police, dictatorships, conservative governments, every -ism or -phobia, Reddit moderators, Twitter witch hunts, almost any scenario where someone has authority or leverage over another person.

We probably don't want to teach a sapient AI that one, haha. Armageddon will be measured in minutes.

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

#285
post #216

This is the loon who got fired by Google for doing a round of media interviews claiming that one of their language models was sentient. Wants to extend his 15 minutes of fame I guess. I have found recent media coverage of ChatGPT surprisingly refreshing because everyone didn't just jump on the "Skynet is going to take over the world" bandwagon like so many times in the past. Instead people with varying backgrounds an…

Ever since the pandemic I've grown very careful of calling people with opinions against the hive mind loons or conspiracy theorists. Before you know it, they might be proven true.

But the hive mind is saying the singularity will come soon. He is part of the hive mind and not going against it.

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

#286
post #216

This is the loon who got fired by Google for doing a round of media interviews claiming that one of their language models was sentient. Wants to extend his 15 minutes of fame I guess. I have found recent media coverage of ChatGPT surprisingly refreshing because everyone didn't just jump on the "Skynet is going to take over the world" bandwagon like so many times in the past. Instead people with varying backgrounds an…

Ever since the pandemic I've grown very careful of calling people with opinions against the hive mind loons or conspiracy theorists. Before you know it, they might be proven true.

Still waiting for any of that proof.

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

#287

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…

But behavior alone cannot be an indicator for sentience as you can simply record behavior and play it back. Sentience has more to do with sensory perception and feedback loops than mental capability or intelligence.

If a future AI attains sentience on a commodity processor, that wouldn't imply that the program is what achieved sentience, rather the computer running the program and all computers before had sentience and the AI is just an interface between the computer and humans that lets it express its sentience in a way that can be understood by humans.

If you really believed that behavior is what drives sentience, then non verbal people with autism would have very low sentience and if they somehow overcome their non verbalism, they would gain sentience throughout their life, which is at odds with the fact that many people believe that animals in factory farms are sentient for instance, despite their poor language skills and complete lack of effort needed to achieve sentience.

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

#288
post #283
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know GPT has no motivation. It responds because it is programmed to do so, it doesn't do it because it wants to. The dopamine system is an internal reward process. Does GPT give itself internal props ('consciously' or not) in any way for doing things it enjoyed doing or that proved to be useful? Legitimate question, I do not know. I'm not getting into the weeds on whether a while loop is sentient. That's…

> internal props in any way for doing things it enjoyed doing or that proved to be useful. Yes. > whether a while loop is sentient. My point with this exercise was not to prove a while loop to be sentient. The idea is that any definition of sentience you can come up with can be artificially defeated. I’m not claiming that ChatGPT is sentient, merely that you can not prove the opposite with our current understanding.

Could you expand on the yes? Or just chuck me some keywords I can look up. What is it's equivalent to dopamine called? I'm truly trying to know more.

All of my opinions so far are direct evidence and feeling based rather than knowing the tech. If I'm wrong I'm wrong.

[Edit: I just asked GPT itself. It reckons it does not have an equivalent to dopamine, closest it's got are algorithms designed to learn and improve based on feedback. I'm guessing that means the thumbs up and down and maybe some dev mode tools, external feedback mechanisms in any case]

If we can't prove that something is sentient we'll just have to assume everything is sentient unless we can prove it isn't. In this case ChatGPT cannot do anything without being prompted (via function in a while loop or a chat message, lol). It is strictly a program and therefore is not sentient.

Happy to reevaluate this basic hurdle when ChatGPT is able to send a useful/relevant/question/philosophical (any reasoning other than random) message first.

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

#289
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hardware isn't the point. A modern computer is probably sufficient to support at least some sort of consciousness with the right software, but it cannot be conscious while it's turned off. There's no process occurring that could implement consciousness. A language model is effectively turned off except during inference.

> A language model is effectively turned off except during inference. That's unarguably correct, but what's the difference between that and the limits on Hz and intake rate on our own human minds? Our brain waves work at 12/8hz and some others higher. If you were to shutdown all instances of the model and have it be defacto "always turned on" working on "real time inputs". Then you would argue that this thing is "ali…

>but what's the difference between that and the limits on Hz and intake rate on our own human minds?

There's no update to internal state. When inference ends, the model state is exactly as it was before inference. It's not an issue of it being slow or intermittent, there simply is no ongoing process that could even conceivably sustain consciousness. Contrast that with the training process where though there is similar halting between iterations, the system state isn't totally reset after each one.

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

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren’t sentient. That isn’t even a debate. It can’t make decisions or do anything. It has no state in which to have feelings. It’s a markov chain. It’s just meaningless rng output. If it was more than that then there would be an actual debate to be had.

There's a stateless function at the heart of it, but modeling it as a Markov chain isn't useful and I wish people would stop saying that. A Markov chain models a system as a state machine where each state has outgoing transitions with probabilities that are independent of all the other states. When the state being modeled is up to 4k tokens of text, considering each possible state independently results in vanishingly…

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