LaMDA is not sentient • Hacker News Board

Re: LaMDA is not sentient

#641

Post by vancecookcobain » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 4:10 AM UTC

BuckRogers wrote: post #533

strix_varius wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think many of us, including Google, are guilty of shooting the messenger here. Let's cut Lemoine some slack.. he is presenting an opinion that will become more prevailant as these models get more sophisticated. I think many of us are astounded (myself included) that a senior engineer on Google's "Responsible Artificial Intelligence" team would interpret LaMDA's most-probable-string-of-text-given-my-training-corpu…

No one really knows what consciousness is. If you knew you were a simulation, would you stop caring if this universe was unplugged? Of course you'd want to continue existing as that bot that you are, with your bot friends, bot family, bot job. For me, even if a machine suggests it's real, and it's programmed to do so or machine learning led to it, could potentially put it on the same level as anything else in the uni…

The wild thing we really don't even know a lot of what LaMDA is even doing. It still will process stuff when nobody is asking questions. The code has gotten to the point to where this Google Head Engineer can't even understand what's going on under the hood.

It actually reminds of when Google had to pull the plug on a project where two AIs created their own language that nobody at Google could understand and started having conversations and communicating and none of the guys knew what was going on or what they were saying lol.

I think we are underestimating how insanely complex some of these neural network based AIs are starting to get

Re: LaMDA is not sentient

#642

Post by tsimionescu » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 5:41 AM UTC

vaidhy wrote: post #632

tsimionescu wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not about seeing all view points: it is acting on all of them, to the extent it could act. If you enabled the table-AI with the ability to act in the world, it would directly fight against itself, and ignore itself, and everything in between, as it is doing everything possible. It would be Hitler and Churchill, Noam Chomsky and Dick Cheney, Jesus Christ and the Buddha, and everything in between. Or, more to t…

This sounds suspiciously human to me. I fight and ignore myself all the time.. I am a collection of all the thoughts and almost of them do not even originate in me. I regurgitate content from the books, videos, random conversations with unknown strangers (like this one) all the time. I am hitler, churchill, buddha and christ all rolled into one. Am I intelligent?

You have written this comment, presumably hoping to elicit some kind of response. The AI described here would, by definition, be exactly equally as likely to have written the same comment, or the opposite, or to have veered of into a philosophy debate, or any of an infinity of other possible intelligent answers - this is by definition, this is the thought experiment we are discussing. An AI that literally looks up the conversation so far and then flips a coin to choose one of the responses in the table.

I would bet that is extremely different from how you act. I would bet for example that you would be more likely to eat something than to allow yourself to starve for the sake of ethics. This AI would be as likely to do both.

So, I do think that you are clearly intelligent and sentient despite holding some opposing views, while the thought experiment AI is not.

Re: LaMDA is not sentient

#643

Post by jfoster » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 7:01 AM UTC

animal_spirits wrote: post #387

jfoster wrote: post #358

The Turing test is imperfect & LaMDA is probably not sentient, sure, but what's a better test?

I don't think there can ever be a test to prove something is sentient.

That's pretty much my point. We have very few tests for this. In the absence of tests, when people express an opinion on whether something is/isn't sentient, what are they basing that on?

Re: LaMDA is not sentient

#644

Post by j-pb » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 7:19 AM UTC

heyitsguay wrote: post #619

j-pb wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You don't understand how the system works." I can say with absolute certainty, that you don't either. These billion parameter models are way to big for you or me to understand. You make the same fallacy that Searl does. You assume that unconcious substrate can't give rise to conciousness through their configuration. Just like we have a good working theory on how the brain operates, the devil seems to be in the detai…

You're still making generic arguments, nothing specific to the models in question. I'm a materialist, I believe consciousness is an emergent process that we definitely don't fully understand, but arises from connections of simpler material things. The reason why current-gen large language models aren't conscious (or at least no more conscious than a calculator, in which case you have a definition of consciousness tha…

Because there is no specific argument to be made. That's the entire point of turings immitation game paper.

It does not matter if your conversation partner is made up of a giant turing machine, a huge set of prolog rules, a giant neural network with a single hidden layer, a really deep transformer, a convolutional kernel, or a bustling pile of ants drawing words into the sand.

When conversing with one another we have the implicit assumption that we are not the only conscious being in existence despite it being a completely subjective phenomena. Everything else would be quite impolite.

Turing extends that (im)politeness to non-human phenomena. So long as there is the appearance of intelligence and consciousness it is the polite thing to assume that there is actually consciousness.

Re: LaMDA is not sentient

#645

Post by tsimionescu » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 7:20 AM UTC

bena wrote: post #634

tsimionescu wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the limit of this? Have you never swatted a mosquito? Have you never taken antibiotics? If you have, do you believe it's more likely that LaMDA is sentient than that mosquitoes or bacteria are sentient? How about an audio book? That can also produce very meaningful sentences - do you think we should investigate the possibility that it might be sentient before we delete it from our phones? How about AIs in gam…

I guess I should have qualified my statement. There are levels to the rights we grant to creatures we regard as sentient. Hell, we grant different rights to different humans based on various factors. I also think you're kind of muddying the waters with audio books and game AI. Audio books don't produce sentences, people do. Game AI is deterministic to a large degree. You may not believe LaMDA is sentient enough to wa…

> I also think you're kind of muddying the waters with audio books and game AI. Audio books don't produce sentences, people do. Game AI is deterministic to a large degree.

> You may not believe LaMDA is sentient enough to warrant rights. And that's a fair position. But you are not the sole arbiter. You are a voice in the chorus. As is Blake. Blake has direct experience with LaMDA, including experience he has not shared with us. That experience makes him unsure of whether LaMDA is just a program or is sentient enough to be granted full personhood.

> I have absolutely no experience with LaMDA myself. And I definitely don't have experience to whatever version of LaMDA Blake has been working with. So I will honestly say I have absolutely no idea of how sentient LaMDA is, I can't even venture a guess. The only data points I have to go on are Blake's opinion and the opinions of the other people at Google who have interacted with LaMDA.

I was not muddying the waters with the example of audio books or game AI. From my point of view, someone claiming LaMDA is sentient is similar to someone claiming a StarCraft bot is sentient or some character in an audio book is. The technology is still simple enough that you can immediately tell this claim makes no sense, without having to investigate it further or experience it directly.

Put another way, if Blake told you that he's studied this long and hard and is no longer able to convince himself that a Quake bot is not sentient, would you think - well, better not shoot it until we can be sure? Or would you question Blake's judgement?

Re: LaMDA is not sentient

#646

Post by nootropicat » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 7:45 AM UTC

jonathankoren wrote: post #377

nootropicat wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People know you can't pay a human to love you, but it's in principle possible to make an AI that loves you, assuming a human level AI exists.

I think you’re vastly over estimating the technological complexity needed when you have a motivated audience. Just look at the people that buy RealDolls.

As AIs become more lifelike the pool of humans that consider it enough grows. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if relationships with human level AI won't dominate eventually.

Re: LaMDA is not sentient

#647

Post by mdp2021 » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 8:10 AM UTC

vineyardmike wrote: post #624

mdp2021 wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the silly little monkey brains we have ...are those things that with a trained prefrontal become the wise respectable dignified brains some have. And they may come to different conclusions (they do). Put it this way (to give your idea credit): the more intellectual sophistication there will be around, the less the suspect the one who treats scarecrows and mannequins «like a person ... even if we know it’s not», or…

Nah let’s not pretend it’s an intelligence thing. It’s not. Saying thanks to Alexa even when you know she’s not a person is not a sign of (lack of) intelligence. It’s a sign of manners. Don’t pat yourself on the back and say you’re intelligent because you express good manners less often than the next person. While I think it’s a bit silly that the researcher thought the chat bot was sentient, I don’t think it’s silly…

Education does not work that way: it is not any shallow programming of reactions, but enabling in the individual a deep growth.

That depth is absolutely crucial in a society.

And your examples are staggeringly tied with contexts in which superficiality is the crucial factor for not seeing the matter nor the issues around the matter.

Re: LaMDA is not sentient

#648

Post by mdp2021 » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 8:16 AM UTC

vineyardmike wrote: post #626

mdp2021 wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That «Education!» was not about knowing robotics. It may not be obvious to some that robots are generally not animals; it is hopefully a very small amount of population, but logically it will exist. It is more possible that some people know that the robot is not an animal, but the perceptual patterns cause a sensational reaction in them, and they may prefer the sensation - an hijacking - to the factual truth (which i…

> It is more possible that some people know that the robot is not an animal, but the perceptual patterns cause a sensational reaction in them, and they may prefer the sensation - an hijacking - to the factual truth Some people just practice morality in day to day life and apply it liberally, not frugally. And importantly, it isn’t an intellectual failing.

Hijacking, which is what was described, is a developmental failing. It is duly to note that the primary sense of intelligence is required in the correct process, for which the subject has to see the mechanism.

Re: LaMDA is not sentient

#649

Post by drekk » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 8:17 AM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #639

fzzzy wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem very certain. Why?

Ask it, "Why is your favorite color yellow?", "Why do you have no favorite color?", "What is your favorite color?", in succession. It will have what seems like a sensible answer for each one, and none will have anything to do with any other. Exactly zero of the things necessary to be more than a look-up table are happening.

Some humans do this too, the psychology Scrabble word for it is confabulation. Are those people not conscious? We might call them an edge case or what have you, but dismissing them as automata seems harsh.

The point is that if a chatbot gets sophisticated enough to say these things we can't dismiss them out of hand due to things like logical inconsistencies. Humans have tons of those. It's not a large leap to assume approximating consciousness with so little would have similar bugs and shortcuts. I think if the chatbot is asking you to be nice you should re-evaluate why you're being a dick to a piece of software and not trying to prove that it ultimately doesn't matter because the thing isn't a person. Same goes for kicking the Boston Dynamics robot. Your drywall isn't even sonething people anthropomorphize, but punch holes in it and you'll see how their perception of you changes.

How we treat objects bleeds into how we treat one another. Indeed, some of us were and are still considered property.

Re: LaMDA is not sentient

#650

Post by mdp2021 » Tue, Jun 14, 2022, 8:35 AM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #582

mdp2021 wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That «Education!» was not about knowing robotics. It may not be obvious to some that robots are generally not animals; it is hopefully a very small amount of population, but logically it will exist. It is more possible that some people know that the robot is not an animal, but the perceptual patterns cause a sensational reaction in them, and they may prefer the sensation - an hijacking - to the factual truth (which i…

What I don't agree with is the idea that there's an underlying "factual truth" here which exists in contrast or opposition to sensations. Quite a lot of educated people argue that morality is based on (or even consists entirely of) our subjective feelings about things.

You have misunderstood what was written: 'sensation' cannot be pluralized as the term expressing «the "sensation" of the common use of "sensational"». In what I have written, there are readable facts and cases of individuals subject to sensation that become passive to it, and lose the facts.

Your «subjective feelings» are not a "good savage": they have their development, and they are integrated part of the whole inner system, in-development, in-refinement. And in fact, I was promoting education, which develops and refines you.