Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient • Hacker News Board

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#31

Post by kareemsabri » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 11:41 PM UTC

CSMastermind wrote: post #18

I think this outcome is unsurprising. While I believe Blake was mistaken in his belief, I also think we should have stronger whistleblower laws that protect people who raise concerns like these. I'm not sure what process I'd put into place but it does feel like one is needed.

It sounds to me like they made a good faith effort to engage with the guy. He came out with this story many months ago. I would argue it indicates lack of qualification to perform effectively to be fooled that the AI you're supposed to be working on is sentient.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#32

Post by dreamcompiler » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 11:41 PM UTC

A gullible employee saw a computer program pass the Turing test and leapt to the conclusion that the thing was sentient. And then he couldn't be persuaded to shut up about trade secrets to the press, so his employer fired him.

He probably thinks he's some kind of whistleblower protecting a new life form. This is a known effect in human psychology and it was discovered in 1966.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_effect

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#33

Post by arcturus17 » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 11:42 PM UTC

Trasmatta wrote: post #14

srvmshr wrote: post #4

LLM are definitely not sentient. As someone with a PhD in this domain, I attribute the 'magic' to large scale statistical knowledge assimilation by the models - and reproduction to prompts which closely match the inputs' sentence embedding. GPT-3 is known to fail in many circumstances which would otherwise be commonplace logic. (I remember seeing how addition of two small numbers yielded results - but larger numbers…

I agree that it's not sentient, but why would commonplace logic be a pre requisite for sentience / consciousness / qualia / whatever you want to call it?

Is there really a difference between commonplace logic, advanced logic, and otherwise? Logic is logic, if there ever was a tautology...

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#34

Post by throwoutway » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 11:42 PM UTC

srvmshr wrote: post #4

LLM are definitely not sentient. As someone with a PhD in this domain, I attribute the 'magic' to large scale statistical knowledge assimilation by the models - and reproduction to prompts which closely match the inputs' sentence embedding. GPT-3 is known to fail in many circumstances which would otherwise be commonplace logic. (I remember seeing how addition of two small numbers yielded results - but larger numbers…

It just seems one engineer failed to acknowledge that he failed the Turing Test even with insider information, and (according to Google) was told he was wrong, but decided to double down and tell the public all about how wrong he was. To which they reported on because the claims were so laughable

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#35

Post by theptip » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 11:42 PM UTC

wrnr wrote: post #20

oh_sigh wrote: post #2

Just to preemptively put this out there, based on the conspiracy theories I saw in previous threads about this, they didn't fire him because they want to keep their super intelligent AI under wraps, they fired him because he broke employment and data security policies: > So, it’s regrettable that despite lengthy engagement on this topic, Blake still chose to persistently violate clear employment and data security pol…

He got fired because he was embarrassing his employer.

No, he got fired for breaching NDAs.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#36

Post by dekhn » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 11:43 PM UTC

kareemsabri wrote: post #15

srvmshr wrote: post #4

LLM are definitely not sentient. As someone with a PhD in this domain, I attribute the 'magic' to large scale statistical knowledge assimilation by the models - and reproduction to prompts which closely match the inputs' sentence embedding. GPT-3 is known to fail in many circumstances which would otherwise be commonplace logic. (I remember seeing how addition of two small numbers yielded results - but larger numbers…

Yeah but what's weird is this guy appears to be a practitioner of the field. He surely knows more about AI than I do, and I find it incredibly obvious it's not sentient. I dunno if he's got some issues or something (it appears he's dressed like a magician underwater in that photo) but it's really odd...

I don't think he was ever really a practioner in the field- more like a SWE who transferred to an ML group and got delusions of grandeur.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#37

Post by throwoutway » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 11:43 PM UTC

klodolph wrote: post #17

kareemsabri wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but what's weird is this guy appears to be a practitioner of the field. He surely knows more about AI than I do, and I find it incredibly obvious it's not sentient. I dunno if he's got some issues or something (it appears he's dressed like a magician underwater in that photo) but it's really odd...

Smart CS students were fooled by ELIZA back in the day.

I don’t think those students were told they were being evaluated though did they? They didn’t know Eliza was a machine right?

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#38

Post by jeffparsons » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 11:43 PM UTC

kareemsabri wrote: post #15

srvmshr wrote: post #4

LLM are definitely not sentient. As someone with a PhD in this domain, I attribute the 'magic' to large scale statistical knowledge assimilation by the models - and reproduction to prompts which closely match the inputs' sentence embedding. GPT-3 is known to fail in many circumstances which would otherwise be commonplace logic. (I remember seeing how addition of two small numbers yielded results - but larger numbers…

Yeah but what's weird is this guy appears to be a practitioner of the field. He surely knows more about AI than I do, and I find it incredibly obvious it's not sentient. I dunno if he's got some issues or something (it appears he's dressed like a magician underwater in that photo) but it's really odd...

I don't think "practitioner of the field" counts for much in this case. In reading his open letter, it was pretty apparent that he'd well and truly crossed over from thinking about the situation rationally into the realm of "I want to believe".

If you ask enough practitioners in any given field the same question, you're nearly guaranteed to eventually get a super wonky response from one of them. The specific field doesn't matter. You could even pick something like theoretical physics where the conversations are dominated by cold mathematical equations. Ask enough theoretical physicists, and you'll eventually find one that is convinced that, for example, the "next later down" in the universe is sentient and is actively avoiding us for some reason, and that's why we can't find it.

On top of this, of course it's the most provocative takes that get the press coverage. Always has been to an extent, but now more than ever.

I guess all I'm saying is that there's not much reason to lend this guy or his opinion any credibility at all.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#39

Post by dekhn » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 11:44 PM UTC

srvmshr wrote: post #30

Trasmatta wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's not sentient, but why would commonplace logic be a pre requisite for sentience / consciousness / qualia / whatever you want to call it?

A brilliant colleague Janelle Shane works specifically on how language models fail (obnoxiously often). This is her line of research to show how LLMs are overhyped / given more credit than should be. I think her fun little experiments will give a better answer than I ever can :). She's on substack & Twitter https://janellecshane.substack.com/p/okay-gpt-3-candy-hearts

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Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#40

Post by randomdata » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 11:45 PM UTC

kareemsabri wrote: post #15

srvmshr wrote: post #4

LLM are definitely not sentient. As someone with a PhD in this domain, I attribute the 'magic' to large scale statistical knowledge assimilation by the models - and reproduction to prompts which closely match the inputs' sentence embedding. GPT-3 is known to fail in many circumstances which would otherwise be commonplace logic. (I remember seeing how addition of two small numbers yielded results - but larger numbers…

Yeah but what's weird is this guy appears to be a practitioner of the field. He surely knows more about AI than I do, and I find it incredibly obvious it's not sentient. I dunno if he's got some issues or something (it appears he's dressed like a magician underwater in that photo) but it's really odd...

Im not sure understanding sentience is a prerequisite for understanding AI, so perhaps that’s where things break down? Bring an expert in one domain doesn’t make one an expert in everything.