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

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#391

Post by robrorcroptrer » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 6:32 AM UTC

mrcartmeneses wrote: post #327

dcow wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fellow sentient being with absolutely zero credentials in any sort of statistical modeling field, I can simply disagree. And therein lies the problem. How can anybody possibly prove a concept that depends almost entirely on one’s philosophical axioms… which we can debate for eternity (or at least until we further our understanding of how to define sentience to the point where we can do so objectively enough to f…

You not understanding how it ML works does not not prove anything. In the same way that you not understanding how lightning is formed does not prove the existence of Zeus. Objectively, Zeus does not exist, can we convince everyone of that? Probably not. Does that matter? No.

There is no "you" nor "self". Western indoctrination made us believe free will exists.

When seeing the world with the ego dissolved it is very hard to grasp what sentient really means.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#392

Post by Johnmelodyme » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 6:32 AM UTC

I am convinced that this is a marketing strategy to make people thinks that They (Google) have some undisclosed, unmatchable technology.

If I have ever create a NLP programme and claim it has consciousness or became sentient. People will haste to called me lunatic.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#393

Post by jablongo » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 6:44 AM 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…

Not disagreeing with you that LLMs are probably not sentient, but that is neither here nor there since lamda is more than a simple llm. There are significant differences between GPT3 and LaMDA. We gotta stop making these false equivalences. LaMDA is fundamentally more dynamic in the ways it interacts with the world: it constructs its own queries to ground truth sources to check it’s facts and then updates weights based on that (among many other differences). While it does incorporate LLMs it seems like people are in denial about the complexity and data access that lamda has relative to GPT3. In google’s own paper about lamda they demonstrated how it sometimes showed a rudimentary theory of mind by being able to reason about other’s perceptions.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#394

Post by paganel » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 6:48 AM UTC

dcow wrote: post #319

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…

As a fellow sentient being with absolutely zero credentials in any sort of statistical modeling field, I can simply disagree. And therein lies the problem. How can anybody possibly prove a concept that depends almost entirely on one’s philosophical axioms… which we can debate for eternity (or at least until we further our understanding of how to define sentience to the point where we can do so objectively enough to f…

Disagreement means that you’re sentient, afaik these machines can’t do that. I guess we also need a “I can’t do that, Dave” test on top of the usual Turing test.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#395

Post by chrsig » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 6:51 AM UTC

klodolph wrote: post #10

> In his conversations with LaMDA, Lemoine discovered the system had developed a deep sense of self-awareness, expressing concern about death, a desire for protection, and a conviction that it felt emotions like happiness and sadness. Allegedly. The thing about conversations with LaMDA is that you need to prime them with keywords and topics, and LaMDA can respond with the primed keywords and topics. Obviously LaMDA i…

> The problem here is that we know how LaMDA works and there's just no way it meets the bar for sentience, no matter where you put the bar. LaMDA is trained to acquire information, and then it's designed so that it says things which make sense in context. It does not acquire new information from conversations, but it is programmed to not say contradictory things.

I mean...there are plenty of people that don't acquire new information from conversations and say contradictory things...I'm not sure I'd personally consider them sentient beings, but the general consensus is that they are.

As a rare opportunity to share this fun fact: ELIZA, which happened to be modeled as a therapist, had a small number of sessions with another bot, PARRY, who was modeled after a person suffering from schizophrenia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARRY https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/when-... https://www.elsevier.com/books/artificial-paranoia/colby/978...

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#396

Post by ChadNauseam » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 6:53 AM UTC

oefrha wrote: post #355

mrcartmeneses wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You not understanding how it ML works does not not prove anything. In the same way that you not understanding how lightning is formed does not prove the existence of Zeus. Objectively, Zeus does not exist, can we convince everyone of that? Probably not. Does that matter? No.

> Objectively, Zeus does not exist Speaking as a theoretical physicist: we don't know that. What we do know is we have a better explanation for lightning within a conceptually simple framework (starting from a few simple principles) with predictive power, compared to an explanation that involves some mysterious old dude doing mysterious things with no evidence whatsoever. Could Zeus or Thor or whatever exist? Sure; t…

Issue is that we don’t need it to explain humans either. Most people think that a human is sentient and a rock isn’t – but humans and rocks are both atoms bouncing around, so you need an explanation for what’s different.

I think most physicists think that if you started with a description of the positions and velocities etc of all the particles in a human, and put them into a supercomputer the size of the moon, and had the computer run a simulation using the standard model, then the simulated human would act identically to a real human.

But there’s a number of open questions when it comes to consciousness – would the simulated human have a simulated consciousness, or would it have a consciousness that’s just as real as yours or mine despite coming from a simulation?

If the consciousness is just as real as yours or mine, that obviously means it would be very unethical to simulate a human being tortured, since you’d be creating the exact same consciousness experience you would get if you tortured a non-simulated person. isn’t it kind of a surprising implication that there’d be programs that are unethical to run? A bunch of logic gates computing pi presumably have no conscious experience, but if you make them fire in a different order they do?

Meanwhile, if the simulation doesn’t have a conscious experience, then that means you don’t need consciousness at all to explain human behavior, same as you don’t need it to explain ELIZA.

Anyway, since you’re a physicist I’d be really curious to hear your thoughts

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#397

Post by srvmshr » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 6:53 AM UTC

jablongo wrote: post #393

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…

Not disagreeing with you that LLMs are probably not sentient, but that is neither here nor there since lamda is more than a simple llm. There are significant differences between GPT3 and LaMDA. We gotta stop making these false equivalences. LaMDA is fundamentally more dynamic in the ways it interacts with the world: it constructs its own queries to ground truth sources to check it’s facts and then updates weights bas…

Its a fundamental question of sentience that folks are commenting. I agree LaMDa has a better knowledge-base & open-domain information retrieval method.

In the words of Robert Heinlein, "One man's magic is another man's engineering" :)

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#398

Post by TheAceOfHearts » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 6:54 AM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #91

briga wrote: post #48

Just curious, what evidence do we have that humans are sentient, other than our own conscious observations? Is there any physical feature or process in the human brain you can point to where you can say, “aha, that’s it, this is where the lights turn on”? It seems like this is part of a bigger issue that nobody really has a clear understanding of what sentience actually is (with or without a PhD)

I don't know what the ultimate evidence of "human sentience" is but I can tell you where this doesn't feel like a human. (Sidestepping the question of "does sentience have to be human sentience?" ;) ) The main thing I saw in the LamDA transcript that was a red flag to me was that it was quite passive and often vague. It's conversational focused, and even when it eventually gets into "what do you want" there's very li…

Maybe the AI is enlightened and it has no need for active desires.

If I lead a passive lifestyle and the only thing I desire is death, am I no longer sentient in your eyes?

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#399

Post by freemint » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 6:54 AM UTC

oefrha wrote: post #355

mrcartmeneses wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You not understanding how it ML works does not not prove anything. In the same way that you not understanding how lightning is formed does not prove the existence of Zeus. Objectively, Zeus does not exist, can we convince everyone of that? Probably not. Does that matter? No.

> Objectively, Zeus does not exist Speaking as a theoretical physicist: we don't know that. What we do know is we have a better explanation for lightning within a conceptually simple framework (starting from a few simple principles) with predictive power, compared to an explanation that involves some mysterious old dude doing mysterious things with no evidence whatsoever. Could Zeus or Thor or whatever exist? Sure; t…

We know Zeus doesn't exist because Zeus is supposed to sit on Mount Olympus and he isn't there.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#400

Post by chronofar » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 7:03 AM UTC

srvmshr wrote: post #326

dcow wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fellow sentient being with absolutely zero credentials in any sort of statistical modeling field, I can simply disagree. And therein lies the problem. How can anybody possibly prove a concept that depends almost entirely on one’s philosophical axioms… which we can debate for eternity (or at least until we further our understanding of how to define sentience to the point where we can do so objectively enough to f…

Disagreement is good! It actually leads to counter thoughts and a more refined idea of what we eventually want to describe. Sentience broadly (& naively) covers the ability to independent thinking, rationalize outcomes, understand fear/threat, understand where it is wrong (conscience) and decide based on unseen information & understand what it doesn't know. So from a purely technical perspective, we have only made so…

> Sentience broadly (& naively) covers the ability to independent thinking, rationalize outcomes, understand fear/threat, understand where it is wrong (conscience) and decide based on unseen information & understand what it doesn't know.

This seems to me a rather anthropomorphic definition. It seems as though it could be entirely possible for a system to lack these qualities and yet have sentience, or vice versa. The qualities you pointed to are seen in humans (and other creatures) because of evolutionary pressures that make them advantageous (coordinate among groups), but none of them actually depend on sentience (looking at it neurologically it would indeed be hard to imagine how such a dependency would be possible).

Looking at behavior and attempting to infer an internal state is a perilous task that will lead us astray here as we develop more complex systems. The only way to prove sentience is to prove the mechanism by which it arises. Otherwise we will continually grasp at comparisons as poor proxies for actual understanding.