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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'

#301

Post by weard_beard »

maxdoop wrote: post #300
weard_beard wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a pre-requisite, yes. Certainly not the only criteria.

But we do know of humans who have something like “locked in” syndrome, where they are full conscious but cannot use their body. And I am not sure sentience is binary . It may be a spectrum, and if that is the case, I again am not sure why people are so confidently dismissive of the question when applied to LLMs . Maybe not the current version, but future stuff especially.

The degree to which we consider, "locked in" life worthwhile is 2 fold: The degree to which they were trained through their senses prior to being, "locked in" and the possibility of returning to an experience of the world through their senses.

I'm not sure we would consider an infant born locked in and never likely to recover, "sentient"

This is compounded with LLMs by the fact that, aside from a temperature sensor in a server rack somewhere, it doesn't even have the same "hardware" as an infant to experience the world.

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

#302

Post by chpatrick »

xmonkee wrote: post #236
chpatrick wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean all the mysterious stuff that makes your experience special and subjective is also kicking around somewhere in the execution of say GPT.

The proof of my subjective experience is my subjective experience of it, not the fact that I can complete sentences. So saying chatgpt has consciousness because it can talk is a complete non-sequitor.

The problem is that you're the only one who experiences it so you can't prove it to anyone else. How do you know ChatGPT doesn't experience anything?

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

#303

Post by guhcampos »

fooker wrote: post #108
guhcampos wrote: post #77

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…

No, I'm trying to say that developers - like me - are not entitled or knowledgeable about what are the properties of a sentient mind, and frequently not very good at reasoning about subjective, non analytical things. That being "an ex Google employee" is a shitty credential and should not give this guy any real credibility to argue about the moral implications of AI for humanity, and there are experts out there who have been studying human and animal behavior for centuries and these people have a lot more to add to the discussion than a bunch of nerds - like me - on Hackernews.

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

#304

Post by guhcampos »

corobo wrote: post #277
fooker wrote: 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…

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…

I agree 100% with your reasoning but not with the concept of sentience you are pleading. The concept I have in my mind involved the capacity for experiencing emotions, something I don't believe worms can do, but which I believe dogs, dolphins, whales and elephants might.

I had to look up the concept of Sapience in English, as it differ a bit from my native Portuguese. In Portuguese, "sapiência" means just Wisdom, something I believe is inherent to human experience and really out of bounds for AI, but it seems in English it can mean just the "capacity of applying knowledge", in which case we could argue an AI could potentially fit the definition.

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

#305

Post by guhcampos »

zwkrt wrote: post #79
guhcampos wrote: post #77

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 might sound a little bit 'tinfoil hat' here, but I believe that what follows is not hyperbole. AI is already the 'Architect' more than most of us would like to admit. Even if it is not sentient, the various AIs that we use during the day were designed with a purpose and they are goal oriented. It is worth reading Daniel Dennet's thoughs about the intentional stance--we know that a toaster is not sentient, but it wa…

That's kind of exactly my point when I say they are not architects, just tools: I agree 100% that people project intent into these things, and I believe that's exactly what our "ex Google employee" is doing here - and it's dangerous.

It's dangerous in part exactly because it shifts the responsibility for the acts of the tool to the tool itself, and away from its author. Like deforestation was the machine's fault, not the fault of the humans driving them.

I can never agree with your affirmation that "AI is already the Architect". It is not, the AI does not design anything. It does not plan anything. It has no ideas, no critical thinking, no judgement of value or morals. The AI just does what it's told, like a tool, a worker ant, or any other algorithm. It's complicated enough that it's not obvious to us what it was told to do, but ultimately it's all it can do.

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

#306

Post by guhcampos »

arisAlexis wrote: post #258
guhcampos wrote: post #77

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…

Tools do not manipulate users so your assumption must be wrong just by logic.

No, tools are used by people to manipulate people. That's precisely the gist.

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

#307

Post by guhcampos »

malux85 wrote: post #115
guhcampos wrote: post #77

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…

That's the thing: the whole "sentience" discussion is not about how good can an AI be at giving answers. It's about what it is to be sentient, which is a concept we, humans, created to define our own experience. A concept that is indeed not clearly defined, not binary, not set in stone, and for this exact reason not a subject of expertise of some random programmer.

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

#308

Post by guhcampos »

kajaktum wrote: post #238
guhcampos wrote: post #77

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 can literally say this about you. Not myself obviously, because I know that _I_ exists. However, I have no way of telling that anyone else is. What is different here? The brain is just a bunch of neurons innit? And I don't believe that the AI is sentient btw.

You can. And if you want to find out if I'm sentient or just some chat it, you'd need to probe me for my ability to solve problems, make judgements, reason about someone else's experiences, all things a chatbot would fail rather ridiculously.

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

#309

Post by guhcampos »

rishav_sharan wrote: post #188
guhcampos wrote: post #77

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…

> Chatbots are not sentient. The problem as always, is that such assertions are meaningless till you have a precise and universally accepted definition of sentience. Till then people will use their subjective opinion for judging sentience, and many would likely find chatbots to be sentient based on their own personal definition

Good thing then that we have subjective opinions, which chatbots don't.

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

#310

Post by guhcampos »

Aeolun wrote: post #177
guhcampos wrote: post #77

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…

> The model itself has no Will, no Desire, no Judgements, no Intention. Isn’t the combined knowledge that it has what generates these things? I don’t think it’s much different from what humans learn over a lifetime.

Knowledge is one aspect of it, sure. We don't really know what all aspects are. We don't exactly know where do all our emotions, our empathy, our culture comes from. Different branches of Psychology and Neuroscience will give you different answers. I don't think many of them would restict to mere neural networks.
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