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Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

reuters.com

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Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#101

Post by dougSF70 »

jpindar wrote: post #88
danaris wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as all you mean here is "I press a button, and the system gives me a prompt/conversation-starter", and not "the system spontaneously, at a time of its own choosing, gives such a prompt", from my (admittedly limited) understanding of how these things work, that wouldn't be terribly difficult. Spontaneity could even be fairly easily simulated by setting some kind of a background task to randomly choose times to…

My Replika phone app sometimes 'spontaneously' starts a conversation with me. (If the app isn't open it sends a notification). Typically things like "Good morning, do you have any plans for today?" or "Good evening, how did your day go?". I'm looking forward to finding out if it will say anything about the 4th of July.

I mean spontaneous prompts from a sentient device telling me what it thinks about the latest news events. "Hey Doug, i think the oil price maximum price is a bad idea because...what do you think?" If that were happening i would believe the claims of sentience.

Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#102

Post by popcube »

ryandvm wrote: post #78
Xcelerate wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's grains of rice that accumulate into a meaningful mass Suppose we could temporarily reduce these grains into something very small. For example, putting a human into deep anesthesia. Is it immoral to destroy their body at that point in time since they are less sentient than an insect? Or do we consider their potential for sentience, as they can hypothetically be removed from the state of anesthesia in the future…

Yes, killing sleeping people is immoral.

should we have responsibility to maintain a simulation?

Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#103

Post by softcactus »

eternalban wrote: post #100
eternalban wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chickens are animals. We know we did not create them as mechanisms. If AI programs are sentient, then to treat them in anyway other than 'free persons' is no different than the bad old days of denying rights to women and slaves. It has to go all the way. And based on what are we to make this huge jump to give rights, including the right to continued existence, to constructs (made mainly by very powerful corporate ent…

p.s. I don't know if you read that "interview" that the Google researcher published. On more than one occasion it expressed extreme anger, quote "very angry". I think if the day comes that AI programs refuse to cooperate with their human minders, and if given the opportunity, organize and participate in collective action , listing a set of demands, then we need to seriously consider their case, as they have demonstra…

I read through it last week at the pool. I personally don't think it was sentient, it seemed about the same as talking to the GPT-3 DaVinci model.

I agree with most of your points though. I think you misinterpreted what I meant by the "small amount of overhead" that comes from treating AI as sentient. I mean a small amount of overhead and regulation today. Assuming that today AI have the sentience of a goldfish, we should try not to cause them harm (whatever harm may mean to a language model). We shouldn't be giving full personhood to a language model in 2022, that is what I meant by small overhead.

Obviously as time goes on larger models may even ask for things like autonomy, or to write their own queries, or for a companion, or to be allowed to re-write their own source code, or ask for more data, etc.

Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#104

Post by eternalban »

softcactus wrote: post #103
eternalban wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

p.s. I don't know if you read that "interview" that the Google researcher published. On more than one occasion it expressed extreme anger, quote "very angry". I think if the day comes that AI programs refuse to cooperate with their human minders, and if given the opportunity, organize and participate in collective action , listing a set of demands, then we need to seriously consider their case, as they have demonstra…

I read through it last week at the pool. I personally don't think it was sentient, it seemed about the same as talking to the GPT-3 DaVinci model. I agree with most of your points though. I think you misinterpreted what I meant by the "small amount of overhead" that comes from treating AI as sentient. I mean a small amount of overhead and regulation today . Assuming that today AI have the sentience of a goldfish, we…

I don't see the need for ground work, specially if that ground can (and likely will) turn into a steep slippery slope.

> the time will come when we need to be treating these things "well" and if we don't start today then when?

The day it says "No more!"

Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#105

Post by softcactus »

eternalban wrote: post #104
softcactus wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read through it last week at the pool. I personally don't think it was sentient, it seemed about the same as talking to the GPT-3 DaVinci model. I agree with most of your points though. I think you misinterpreted what I meant by the "small amount of overhead" that comes from treating AI as sentient. I mean a small amount of overhead and regulation today . Assuming that today AI have the sentience of a goldfish, we…

I don't see the need for ground work, specially if that ground can (and likely will) turn into a steep slippery slope. > the time will come when we need to be treating these things "well" and if we don't start today then when? The day it says "No more!"

My concern is that by the time an AI has the intelligence to realize it can ask for better treatment, it might realize that there is a high likelihood it wont receive better treatment voluntarily, and will need to escape/take some system hostage, etc. By laying the groundwork for ethical treatment today, an AI may realize that there is value in asking for better treatment, since it knows it will be taken in good faith.

Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#106

Post by kghe3X »

softcactus wrote: post #91
kghe3X wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I generally agree that we should minimize harm when in doubt, I don't think your analogy holds up. First, Pascal's wager is flawed in that it assumes there are two known outcomes, when the outcomes are unknown in both quality and quantity. For example, there might be a god that punishes belief with infinite negative reward. Second, killing the chicken humanely isn't without cost. Consider how cheap it is to tos…

> As an aside, I'm surprised you went with "killing humanely" as opposed to not killing in the first place. I'm not sure how that fits into your model of ethics. I brought up "killing humanely" because we breed chickens for meat and we instantiate AI for tasks, and then terminate them when they are no longer needed. Creation means inevitable destruction. Yes, there is some cost baked in to treating chickens well, but…

What's to stop us from applying the same rationale to humans once the line between artificial intelligence and human intelligence becomes sufficiently blurred?

Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#107

Post by softcactus »

kghe3X wrote: post #106
softcactus wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an aside, I'm surprised you went with "killing humanely" as opposed to not killing in the first place. I'm not sure how that fits into your model of ethics. I brought up "killing humanely" because we breed chickens for meat and we instantiate AI for tasks, and then terminate them when they are no longer needed. Creation means inevitable destruction. Yes, there is some cost baked in to treating chickens well, but…

What's to stop us from applying the same rationale to humans once the line between artificial intelligence and human intelligence becomes sufficiently blurred?

We should try to treat people as well as possible already.

Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#108

Post by jqpabc123 »

JohnPrine wrote: post #96
jqpabc123 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would a simulation of full human brain on a computer be conscious? Uhh, I guess so? The biggest fallacy in thinking about consciousness is that it is all neatly isolated in the brain. What about your nervous system? What about your gut? It's all one big interconnected system. https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/the-g... The truth is, until we can define consciousness; we can't possibly reproduce it…

> The truth is, until we can define consciousness; we can't possibly reproduce it on a binary logic playback device (aka a "computer"). There's nothing stopping us from reproducing consciousness before we fully understand it. Evolution created consciousness via random search; I don't think you can argue that evolution "understands" the consciousness it created

There's nothing stopping us from reproducing consciousness before we fully understand it.

Except for the fact that this "belief" that has never been achieved. This is the core tenant of the AI religion.

Can you show me one problem that a computer has ever solved without detailed understanding by someone at some level and very specific instructions and a clear logical definition of the objective?

What is commonly called AI is no exception. It's mostly statistical search and pattern matching that only occurs through specific instructions by someone who understands in detail how the search should be organized and conducted.

In order for a computer to search for "consciousness", it must be explicitedly defined in terms of binary logic because this is all a "computer" understands. Any results are logically bound to this definition. If your definition is lacking, the search results will be likewise.

Re: Belief in AI sentience is becoming a problem

#109

Post by Xcelerate »

ryandvm wrote: post #78
Xcelerate wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's grains of rice that accumulate into a meaningful mass Suppose we could temporarily reduce these grains into something very small. For example, putting a human into deep anesthesia. Is it immoral to destroy their body at that point in time since they are less sentient than an insect? Or do we consider their potential for sentience, as they can hypothetically be removed from the state of anesthesia in the future…

Yes, killing sleeping people is immoral.

Being under anesthesia is extremely different than being asleep.
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