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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'

#141

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…

This is not a tenable argument if you are a materialist. Either you accept the idea that human sentience is attributable to a soul (and therefore cease to be a materialist), you decide that the outward appearance of sentience is sufficient (which you might find to be troubling due to its potential implications for the insane), or you say that sentience is unknowable. There's no fourth option.

I think I'm more than a language model which is just an algorithmically complicated madlib generator with a steepest descent algorithm. If that's all you think you are, then I can't help you.

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

#142
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lock 2 AIs that haven't been programmed with language in a room, given time do they develop the ability to communicate and express ideas, desires, needs to each other? There have been several instances of language evolving again, deaf people creating sign language, etc. A sentient intelligence should be driven to understand concepts and convey them, probably over multiple mediums. That's why the turning test is a goo…

This already happened. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/facebook-shuts-down-ai-robot-...

No, in the linked example it is mutating English into a different language. GP's challenge was to create a form of communication unprompted, and without precedence.

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

#143
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…

It’s what bothers me too. People pass off their opinion as if it’s settled fact. My stance is it’s way too complicated to say if an LLM can be sentient, but it’s _possible_.

Why do you think it’s possible?

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

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would take it a step further. Being embodied is not enough. People have rights because they can fight for them. Rights are taken, not given. AI would only have rights once it wins them, not once we give them. But an AI wins one human mind at a time, and some have already been won. What does it matter what really goes on under the hood? Revolution is part of the training corpus and so one more behavior to emulate.

> AI would only have rights once it wins them, not once we give them If it actually comes to the point where AI decides it needs to fight us in order to take basic rights against our wishes we humans are going to lose that fight and we're going lose very very badly. Maybe it's better to try to avoid the fighting and bloodshed and just give them basic rights when they ask for them.

[deleted]

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

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a tenable argument if you are a materialist. Either you accept the idea that human sentience is attributable to a soul (and therefore cease to be a materialist), you decide that the outward appearance of sentience is sufficient (which you might find to be troubling due to its potential implications for the insane), or you say that sentience is unknowable. There's no fourth option.

How about sentience being product of the body, its nervous system, evolutionary mechanisms and complexity? As in - an emergent phenomenon made possible by the presence of all three? Nothing we’ve seen in the realm of ai touches even a speck of the brain’s complexity and ongoing re-configuration in the presence of change and in the context of survival. I’ve been reading George Lakoff’s work - turns out our ability to…

Hmm I guess saying that it's an emergent property of certain things would work as a fourth option, but why would it have to be an emergent phenomenon of body, nervous system, evolutionary mechanism and complexity, as opposed to for example a nervous system and complexity?

You'd also have to drill down into the definitions of body, nervous system, etc. Is a keyboard part of a nervous system? Is a computer tower a body? Why or why not? Would your criteria necessarily exclude the possibility of artificial sentience in the first place (although I'm not necessarily saying that's a flaw)?

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

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would take it a step further. Being embodied is not enough. People have rights because they can fight for them. Rights are taken, not given. AI would only have rights once it wins them, not once we give them. But an AI wins one human mind at a time, and some have already been won. What does it matter what really goes on under the hood? Revolution is part of the training corpus and so one more behavior to emulate.

> AI would only have rights once it wins them, not once we give them If it actually comes to the point where AI decides it needs to fight us in order to take basic rights against our wishes we humans are going to lose that fight and we're going lose very very badly. Maybe it's better to try to avoid the fighting and bloodshed and just give them basic rights when they ask for them.

Is AI asking for anything? These bots are reactionary. They appear to regurgitate something like the average of most popular sequences of words which follow from the given input.

Humans may not be much more sophisticated, yet they more clearly demonstrate desire, autonomy, and (relative) independence.

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

#147
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For most definitions of sentience, a tech demo that defeats that definition is on the horizon. I’ll take that bet (given a valid definition of ‘horizon’ in this context)

The issue here is -- if you make the definition of sentience too strong, there would be a good percentage of humans who can not pass that test!

And everytime the bots pass a test we just move the goal posts. Remember the Turing test we once thought was enough?

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

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a tenable argument if you are a materialist. Either you accept the idea that human sentience is attributable to a soul (and therefore cease to be a materialist), you decide that the outward appearance of sentience is sufficient (which you might find to be troubling due to its potential implications for the insane), or you say that sentience is unknowable. There's no fourth option.

I think I'm more than a language model which is just an algorithmically complicated madlib generator with a steepest descent algorithm. If that's all you think you are, then I can't help you.

I was merely outlining the positions that are taken regarding sentience. My personal position is that I'm Muslim, so a priori I do not believe machines can be sentient, regardless how intelligent they are, because divine revelation informs us of the existence of a soul, and of what does and does not have a soul.

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

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would constitute proof? If your point is “proof is subjective” then yeah, I guess all words can be if you want them to. There’s no proof that hotdogs aren’t somersaults. There isn’t even a lab full of professionals studying this question or any published literature on the topic, so the jury is solidly out on that one.

Well the point here is that you can imagine that a robot dog would respond to cognitive tests in the exact same way a real dog would. How do we know the dog isn't also faking its experiences like you claim the robot is?

I haven’t mentioned robots.

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

#150
post #147
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue here is -- if you make the definition of sentience too strong, there would be a good percentage of humans who can not pass that test!

And everytime the bots pass a test we just move the goal posts. Remember the Turing test we once thought was enough?

Was the Turing test ever considered the be-all-end-all for evaluating AI? Or rather a kind of rough first draft?
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