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Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

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Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#461

Post by mjburgess »

zarzavat wrote: post #451
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 attribute the 'magic' to large scale statistical knowledge assimilation by the models Can the magic of the human brain not also be attributed to "large scale statistical knowledge assimilation" as well, aka learning ? > 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 gave garbled outp…

>"large scale statistical knowledge assimilation" as well, aka learning

No, experimentation is an act on the world to set its state and then measure it. That's what learning involves.

These machines do not act on the world, they just capture correlations.

In this sense, machines are maximally schizophrenic. They answer "yes" to "is there a cat on the matt?" not because there is one, but because "yes" was what they heard most often.

Producing models of correlations in half-baked measures of human activity has nothing to do with learning. And everything to do with a magic light box that fools dumb apes.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#462

Post by alpaca128 »

irthomasthomas wrote: post #456
fragmede wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone’s focusing on that because they want to discuss the interesting bit - is it sentient. What you’re pointing out is true, but not really interesting to discuss because everyone already knows that and it’s not that controversial. (For limited values of everyone. Obvi not all readers actually know that.) I mean, it could be interesting to discuss a more European style of employment where he couldn’t be fired for…

Everybody already knows that code running on a computer cannot become sentient. I don't know why this is interesting. Someone said a dumb thing, breached their contract, and got fired for it. The end.

> Everybody already knows that code running on a computer cannot become sentient

That sounds pretty confident considering we don't even know how sentience works or emerges.

Aside from that I agree this specific story isn't particularly interesting, though. The media hyped it up to an insane degree.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#463

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

zarzavat wrote: post #451
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 attribute the 'magic' to large scale statistical knowledge assimilation by the models Can the magic of the human brain not also be attributed to "large scale statistical knowledge assimilation" as well, aka learning ? > 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 gave garbled outp…

I don't see how this is different to a computer which exceeds average human performance on math tasks - which they all do, from an 8-bit micro upwards.

Being able to do arithmetic at some insane factor faster than humans isn't evidence of sentience. It's evidence of a narrow-purpose symbol processor which works very quickly.

Working with more complex symbols - statistical representations of "language" - doesn't change that.

The set of things that makes us us is not primarily intellectual, and it's a fallacy to assume it is. The core bedrock of human experience is built from individual motivation, complex social awareness and relationship building, emotional expression and empathy, awareness of body language and gesture, instinct, and ultimately from embodied sensation.

It's not about chess or go. Or language. And it's not obviously statistical.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#464

Post by nuccy »

scotty79 wrote: post #458
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 think the path to actually considering those models to be sentient is to make them able to assimilate new knowledge from conversation and making them able to create reasonably supported train of thought leading from some facts to a conclusion, akin to mathematical proof.

Wasn't new knowledge assimilation from talks the reason for Microsoft infamous Twitter chatbot to be discarded [1]. Despite such ability it definitely was not sentient.

I rised this point in another thread on HN about LaMDA: all its answers were "yes"-answers, not a single "no". Self-sentient AI should have its own point of view: reject what it thinks is false, and agree about what it thinks is true.

1. https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297050/tay-microsoft-ch...

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#465

Post by seanhunter »

harryf wrote: post #439
seanhunter wrote: post #422

Everyone seems to be focussing on the debate about sentience, but iirc he was fired for breaching the employee confidentiality policy by talking to the media without approval. My understanding is a normal employee talking to the press about commercially confidential matters against policy and without approval would only have protection from retaliation under certain pretty narrow "whistleblower" public interest carve…

There’s a great episode with Blake Lemoine on the Duncan Trussel podcast (Duncan created the Midnight Gospel on Netflix) - https://open.spotify.com/episode/0NXNvJtRQSuWl4HM1MvhD0?si=V... Listening to that it seems clear Blake knew he was likely to be fired but in his eyes it’s some kind of a duty to tell the world. One interesting point he makes in the Podcast is Lamda is not one thing like GPT-3 but a bunch of diffe…

Cynically, it seems possible to me Blake knew he was likely to be fired and thought by "telling the world" (aka talking to the media about something fantastic that would gain a bunch of attention) he could get some fame/notoriety and a possible second act.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#466

Post by irthomasthomas »

alpaca128 wrote: post #462
irthomasthomas wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody already knows that code running on a computer cannot become sentient. I don't know why this is interesting. Someone said a dumb thing, breached their contract, and got fired for it. The end.

> Everybody already knows that code running on a computer cannot become sentient That sounds pretty confident considering we don't even know how sentience works or emerges. Aside from that I agree this specific story isn't particularly interesting, though. The media hyped it up to an insane degree.

"That sounds pretty confident considering we don't even know how sentience works or appears"

This works better the other way, no?

- "The code has become sentient!”

-- "Define sentient..."

sound of crickets

Edit: Actually, I suppose it wouldn't be the sound of crickets, but the sound of a thousand idiots regurgitating the last YouTube video they watched on the subject, but the informational content is the same.

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#468

Post by DonHopkins »

mongol wrote: post #443
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already have, and I'm considering trying it out with my own cat at some point. Cats are way more intelligent than people give them credit for, I agree. But I think you can get very far without the ability to turn the mind's eye inward, and I don't think it's controversial to state that cats don't have a great deal of self-awareness and metacognitive ability. Neosocial insects like ants are amazing indeed. I often w…

> And, to quote Oliver Sachs: "I'm not sure about octopuses..." I thought this quote was about the octopus that correctly predicted the outcome of games in a FIFA world cup. But seems it was something else?

...predicted? Or CAUSED???

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#469

Post by pyinstallwoes »

> Blake still chose to persistently violate clear employment and data security policies that include the need to safeguard product information.

Can't that be taken to be understood as, Blake got fired for letting the cat of the bag and continuing to let more cats out of the bag, or at least saying the cat was just hoax and was never there?

Re: Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient

#470

Post by DonHopkins »

NHQ wrote: post #274
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…

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