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Today's AI Isn't Sentient

time.com

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Re: Today's AI Isn't Sentient

#31

Post by kylebenzle »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #24
js8 wrote: post #15

Nice that at least, the authors are trying to define a practical test for sentience, and do not remain in the subjective realm. There are 2 problems though: 1. If an actor says "I am hungry" during a theater play, he is not reporting his internal state, but merely playing along. The LLM might always be in a "play along" mode, and have its own thoughts (which it keeps to itself) about its situation. It might also not…

> The LLM might always be in a "play along" mode, and have its own thoughts (which it keeps to itself) about its situation. The LLM doesn't exist if I remove the power cable / hit it with Ctrl+C in terminal?

The Time article is tiresome, how silly that we even need to explain that LLMs are not actually "AI" to people.

Top comment's quote is non-sense in the context of what an LLM is, a mathematical model, thats like wondering if a TV keeps "watching shows" when we arn't watching it.

And the quip that LLMs are ephemeral as a justification for not being "real intelligence" is just dumb heaped upon dumb.

Re: Today's AI Isn't Sentient

#32

Post by Nasrudith »

raldi wrote: post #8

This fails the brain-in-vat test. Put mine in one, give it the exact same signals, and I’m still sentient and will experience hunger even without a stomach. Or even without the science fiction: people with amputated limbs frequently report phantom itches on them.

I would disagree with the experience hunger without a stomach part, based on my empirical experiences with remembering being under general anesthesia. I didn't even feel my heartbeat and calmly wondered if I was dead until I came to. Phantom limbs are a thing certainly, but there seems to be a certain amount of dependence upon bodily inputs.

Re: Today's AI Isn't Sentient

#33

Post by robmccoll »

jacknews wrote: post #4

meh, this is simply the grounding problem. I agree with the conclusion, but not the reasoning. An AI trained on low level sensory input, rather than words, might well be able to 'feel' hunger. Even so, I think it's correct that current model architectures lack sentience. I think that requires a continuous updating loop of experience, rather than the once-through dream sequence of current models.

This is it to me. The argument that we are different because we have a current state that includes more inputs and other kinds of inputs than (current model state + context) seems thin. You could just expand context to include current physical state and expand output to include generating things like motor control in addition to words. The big difference between us and current AI is our (somewhat illusive) stream of consciousness. We operate on a combination of noisy decaying context and continuous training. Embody an LLM (or LLM-like architecture) with the right I/O, starting motivation, and the ability to continuously update its own state, and I think you'd have a hard time arguing that it isn't sentient.

Re: Today's AI Isn't Sentient

#34

Post by throw310822 »

jacknews wrote: post #19
jayd16 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking purely philosophicaly if you cloned a person, fed them memories, asked them a question and then killed them right after, would they not be sentient? It's really quite hard to come up with simple tests like these.

Indeed, though I'm not clear on your deiknymi, it's quite hard to determine sentience. IMHO the Turing test has not aged well, and is insufficient to really answer the question; It's now quite possible to make something that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, etc, but that is clearly, on close inspection, not actually a duck.

And I always thought that the Turing test was a philosophical way to solve the matter- I always intended it as meaning "it's pointless to inspect closer something that quacks, walks like a duck: because walking and quacking are the essence of the duck".

And now I am surprised at how people seem to have understood the test the other way around- as if it was meant to be just some kind of empirical test to be confirmed by some more rigorous inspection.

And yes, of course LLMs are nor sentient as humans are: but the limits of their sentience should be clearly visible in the limits of their discourse.

Re: Today's AI Isn't Sentient

#35

Post by mediumsmart »

jacknews wrote: post #4

meh, this is simply the grounding problem. I agree with the conclusion, but not the reasoning. An AI trained on low level sensory input, rather than words, might well be able to 'feel' hunger. Even so, I think it's correct that current model architectures lack sentience. I think that requires a continuous updating loop of experience, rather than the once-through dream sequence of current models.

how is that loop going to work? You can't put experiences into language because you need a linguistic map to have a word that points to another word that points to another word ... because happy is just a word, its not the experience. So you say I am happy and the ai asks, what is happy? and you say its this warm and fuzzy feeling and the ai asks what is feeling? ... and off you go mapping abstractions for things that can't be written down for someone who never felt them because that someone does not have a pulse. ...

once you have the skin you can put touch into an electric impulse, yes, but you need to have had the skin first. why is this so hard to understand for people? do they actually believe that bullshit "I think therefore I am? please. ai is going to write our bash scripts and that is as good as it gets.

Re: Today's AI Isn't Sentient

#37

Post by ta2112 »

JaggedJax wrote: post #27

To me a more important part of sentience is a continuous existence. Today's AI is still very discrete. It exists and then it does not, repeated. Even large window sizes are still just discrete calculations before the model goes back to sleep. A mostly always-on streaming style architecture where the model is continuously fed input and sensory data and always processing it, whether or not it is being asked a question,…

> Even large window sizes are still just discrete calculations before the model goes back to sleep.

This describes me! I wake up, do a bunch of stuff, and then go back to sleep.

Re: Today's AI Isn't Sentient

#38

Post by stvltvs »

JaggedJax wrote: post #27

To me a more important part of sentience is a continuous existence. Today's AI is still very discrete. It exists and then it does not, repeated. Even large window sizes are still just discrete calculations before the model goes back to sleep. A mostly always-on streaming style architecture where the model is continuously fed input and sensory data and always processing it, whether or not it is being asked a question,…

Seems like an arbitrary criterion. Human beings' conscious experience is interrupted by deep sleep every night.

Re: Today's AI Isn't Sentient

#39

Post by Ukv »

JohnFen wrote: post #26
jacknews wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, though I'm not clear on your deiknymi, it's quite hard to determine sentience. IMHO the Turing test has not aged well, and is insufficient to really answer the question; It's now quite possible to make something that quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, etc, but that is clearly, on close inspection, not actually a duck.

Alan Turing himself didn't propose "the Turing Test" as an actually meaningful test. It was just a thought experiment he called "the imitation game". "According to Turing, the question whether machines can think is itself “too meaningless” to deserve discussion." https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-test/

> Alan Turing himself didn't propose "the Turing Test" as an actually meaningful test

It was the wording "can machines think" that Turing considered ambiguous due to varying opinions on how to define "think". He proposed the experiment specifically as a less ambigious replacement - I think it's entirely wrong to say that he did not intend it to be meaningful.

Re: Today's AI Isn't Sentient

#40

Post by ysofunny »

in any case, I think it already passed the Turing test and then some because in my (in this case, not humble) opinion, there are some UFO contactee and disclosure groups (such as swaruu.org) who I think are actually an advanced military grade chat AI that's fooled a lot of humans

now which is more farfetched? what they say they are; they claim to be in orbit already.

or that they are an advanced sentient AIs (many of them in fact) made somewhere in europe or maybe russia? impossible to know

I guess the most plausible is that it's all fake or whatever but it's also the least exciting

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