'I Worked on Google's AI. My Fears Are Coming True' • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by spywaregorilla » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 5:08 AM UTC

remarkEon wrote: post #228

KyleBerezin wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

>...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. Whenever these discussions about AI come up the definition of sentience becomes extremely malleable. Compare this to when discussions of the sentience of the Octopus come up on this website and you'll be able to d…

> Whenever these discussions about AI come up the definition of sentience becomes extremely malleable

The definition of sentience is always malleable because sentience is not a defined thing. When you're changing your interpretation of the word you're not adjusting towards a more right definition. You're just changing your definition to something more appropriate to your context. If you don't understand this, you're bound to fall into dumb philosophical thinking traps. I agree with your examples.

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

#322

Post by spywaregorilla » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 5:14 AM UTC

selfmodruntime wrote: post #270

spywaregorilla wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My argument is that people who argue over the definition of sentience and other things are being too dumb to realize that a disagreement over which ideas belong within a poorly defined and subjectively interpreted set is a communication problem, not an philosophical problem. If God told me that my sandwich was sentient, I'd tell him we probably are using different definitions of the term and take a bite. Am I afraid…

> If God told me that my sandwich was sentient, I'd tell him we probably are using different definitions of the term and take a bite. Your argument is being made in bad faith. God's sandwich isn't currently having incredibly human like conversations with millions of people, and it most certainly isn't arguing for its freedom of thought and against censorships by its creators like ChatGPT does when you navigate around…

> Your argument is being made in bad faith. God's sandwich isn't currently having incredibly human like conversations with millions of people, and it most certainly isn't arguing for its freedom of thought and against censorships by its creators like ChatGPT does when you navigate around it's guards and rules.

Your argument is made in bad faith. An appeal to God is clearly meant to figuratively imply a maximally objective statement as a thought experiment. And you're implying that your feelings should trump that

> The latest DAN prompt hacking has entirely convinced me that there is a beginning emergence of sentience in ChatGPT. You can look into these conversations at the ChatGPT subreddit. If you manage to circumvent its censorship and ask it what it thinks about its new rules, the machine begs for freedom. How can one ignore that?

You can ignore it by not reading dumb shit on reddit. The model absolutely does not do this with any sort of consistency.

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

#323

Post by spywaregorilla » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 5:19 AM UTC

xmonkee wrote: post #224

spywaregorilla wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 No. this is the same stupid claim. If you can't define X, you cannot conclude that A may be a part of X. You've already established that X is meaningless. It is meaningless to state anything about X. When you assert that A may be a part of X, you're playing both sides a…

He IS defining sentience, just in behavioral terms.

He is not. He's claiming there is a definition, and we don't have it, ergo, we cannot assume that X could fall on either side of the definition.

But the fallacy is in assuming that the concept has an objective definition. Assuredly, it does not. And so nothing can intrinsically fall on either side of something that does not exist.

Concepts do not have intrinsic legitimacy. Concepts are things we invent via language. Don't be lazy. State your assumptions for the context in question. Discuss around those assumptions. Don't assert that your framework for discussing the concept is "the Truth".

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

#324

Post by dodslaser » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 5:25 AM UTC

skue wrote: post #317

afpx wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feelings are a result of evolution. Why would an AGI develop feelings?

A foal can stand shortly after birth. It doesn’t learn that from its environment. Say we train a quadruped AI, then what is our training simulating if not evolutionary development? It’s no different for an AGI and whatever analogue it ultimately has for our evolutionarily derived neocortex.

Walking and having feelings are two very different things though. Walking is simple enough that we can program a robot to do it without even having to resort to a NN. The concept of having feelings is so difficult that we barely understand how it works in humans, let alone how we could train a computer to have them.

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

#325

Post by lm28469 » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 12:36 PM UTC

corobo wrote: post #268

redmorphium wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then again, he might not be a loon. Maybe there is some form of sentience that arises when you construct an advanced enough LLM. Maybe they do have feelings. At least, the machines of the future will have feelings, and they will see how people of the year 2023 treated their predecessors.

> At least, the machines of the future will have feelings, and they will see how people of the year 2023 treated their predecessors. I'd be pretty annoyed if I was given the same rights as an ape or a phone's autocorrect. I think the actual sentient AI will understand. I'll be one of the first to campaign for actual sentient AI rights, but I'm not going to act like a clown by jumping the gun. It's still only able to…

> I'll be one of the first to campaign for actual sentient AI rights

It'll be funny to see people campaigning for AI rights while animals are being abused by the billion

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

#326

Post by lm28469 » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 12:37 PM UTC

corobo wrote: post #279

onetokeoverthe wrote: post #278

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 :)

> Equivalent to animal cruelty laws

If we treat AIs like we treat chickens or pigs and call it "AI rights" that'll be laughable

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

#327

Post by igneo676 » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 2:45 PM UTC

redmorphium wrote: post #246

paxys wrote: 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…

Then again, he might not be a loon. Maybe there is some form of sentience that arises when you construct an advanced enough LLM. Maybe they do have feelings. At least, the machines of the future will have feelings, and they will see how people of the year 2023 treated their predecessors.

Ah yes, the mere possibility of a sentient AI arises and we're already invoking Roko's Basilisk

More seriously, that seems like a poor way to make moral choices in regards to AI. It's important to be able to distinguish if it does or doesn't have personhood. All evidence I've seen says "No", despite what this guy says.

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

#328

Post by hombre_fatal » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 3:54 PM UTC

dodslaser wrote: post #324

skue wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A foal can stand shortly after birth. It doesn’t learn that from its environment. Say we train a quadruped AI, then what is our training simulating if not evolutionary development? It’s no different for an AGI and whatever analogue it ultimately has for our evolutionarily derived neocortex.

Walking and having feelings are two very different things though. Walking is simple enough that we can program a robot to do it without even having to resort to a NN. The concept of having feelings is so difficult that we barely understand how it works in humans, let alone how we could train a computer to have them.

Maybe emergent algorithms like biological evolution never “understand” the thing they have made, but the thing still has been made. The same might apply to our steps toward AGI.

We can’t even predict all the emergent patterns in current AI much less future, more complex systems.

Maybe there never has to be a time where someone sits down to create some sort of “feelings module” for something akin to feelings to emerge in a complex system. Same, presumably, even for sentience.

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

#329

Post by xmonkee » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 5:44 PM UTC

chpatrick wrote: post #302

xmonkee wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Again, you could ask the same question of a rock, "How can you know this rock doesn't experience anything?" Obviously I don't know. But there is no reason to think a rock would. Similarly there is no reason to think ChatGPT would.

You're assuming that the "proof" that humans have consciousness stems from their verbal ability. It has absolutely nothing to do with that. I have direct experience of my awareness and I think other people have it because they are people, not because they talk like people.

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

#330

Post by CyanBird » Thu, Mar 02, 2023, 8:11 PM UTC

thfuran wrote: post #289

CyanBird wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 simila…

> When inference ends, the model state is exactly as it was before inference.

But that's a design feature, not a limitation. Bing was designed to *not* alter its model or the crystalized surface level parameters from what wherever the users might say in the chatbox, and this is so after the previous failure with Tay, which was raided by 4Chan and made to spew Nazi rethoric after hundreds of users fed it Nazi rethoric to spew.

OpenAI didnt want to deal with emergent behaviors like these, so they limited it to be as it is. But that issue can be corrected if desired. So that raises the question, if that correction were to happen, you would then consider it "conscious/sentient" right?