Came across this a few days ago. Basically a Google engineer (who is also a priest) feels it is scientifically merited to explore whether Google's latest and greatest AI is sentient. Lots of things to entangle including Google's internal ethics and standards of behaviour, the murky nature of what actually goes on within these behemoth corporations not answerable to anyone but their shareholders, and not least the nature of sentience and personhood and whether AIs (and other beings?) can be deemed to possess it. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/12/google-engineer-ai-bot-sentient-blake-lemoine The conversation, edited from several sessions, is published by the engineer in question Blake Lemoine here. https://medium.com/@cajundiscordian/is-lamda-sentient-an-interview-ea64d916d917 A contrary opinion from a Linguistics expert Blake himself defers to on some matters of linguistics https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/14/human-like-programs-abuse-our-empathy-even-google-engineers-arent-immune (I'm probably betraying my political leanings here 😂) I'm no IT guy and I don't even program. What do others think? Those of you with experience in IT or Philosophy or Linguistics or even those with no experience at all!

This is pretty scary shit is what I think. Once again, corporations messing around with shit they shouldn't be and when they open pandora's box we're all in for it.

Interesting conversation, hardly surprising and the AI is extremely useful to carry out tasks at a rate we can’t. Some would think it will replace humans in employment sector. Sure, it does, for example, making some of the repetitive skills redundant. At the same time, it had created an acute demand for skills in other areas. The corporations and we employed will have to retrain, update our skills and stay relevant. If we put these technologies to good use, it is good. It can make us all productive, prevent accidents, disasters and amongst many excellent things. But, the technology is so advanced, there are risks in areas you don’t want to give this technology a full control or exercise a decision; such automated decision, if left unsupervised, can wreck havoc, if technology senses danger. As far as the sentient is concerned, billions of human hours and money have into development. It is therefore not surprising they have sentiments, emotions and think like us - based on the information fed into those AI technology. But, you can’t draw a parallel between humans and the AI. I do not think you can even compare what a 7-year old kid feels like. Try engaging in a conversation with Siri steadily start saying things it won’t like — ex: something rude. It won’t like. It is very capable of achieving things or seeing things at scale. But, end of the day, it’s a tool created by humans. Edit : Bottom line : We must draw a solid line, where neither we humans nor the tools we develop cross that line.

It seems to have passed the original Turing test with flying colours - at least with Lemoine. The real issue (in my totally personal opinion), is that we don't have an agreed definition of "intelligence", "sentience" or even "consciousness"; I'm not even sure there *can* be one, considering I hear quite a few people expressing sentiments similar to @"LMSC"#p19963 "at the end of the day, it's a tool created by humans." Yes, it is - why does this preclude it from being conscious, sentient or intelligent? Particularly since we can't really explain the behaviour of the entity in algorithmic terms AND we can't explain our own behaviour either. (Or maybe I misunderstood what you were saying?) To avoid misunderstanding - I'm definitely not arguing that Siri (or Alexa) are conscious, sentient or intelligent. I don't know about LaMDA, but I certainly don't count the fact that it has been created by humans as something that goes against it *possibly* being conscious, sentient or intelligent.

The thing is the codes are so complex and massive, like that Google Engineer admitted, we may not even be able to debug and understand why the AI thinks in a certain way.

Humans can't help but anthropomorphise non human things, we do it with animals, cars and probably our coffee machine so it's no surprise that we do it with AI. That said, I'm not sure whether machine learning will ever lead us to AI that is sentient or not and I'm not sure this will ever be more than a matter of opinion rather than fact. Humans and AI are both complex neural networks controlled by trillions of electrical impulses. Who can say that one is sentient and which is not. I work in health IT and automation via ML/AI is already starting to be used in various fields such as radiology. I have no suspicion that these robots are sentient - yet. :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSIKBliboIo

@"Gagaryn"#p19967 Nicely captures the underlying risk of an unknown the humanity can face. That’s why drawing a line is important. On a lighter vein, imagine an AI driven smart lock around our home refusing to allow us in in a freezing winter! The coffee machine has gone too smart and it says it is not a mood to make a cuppa in the morning or it says the steam boiler is too hot for it at 130C and auto defaults to room temperature! 🤣🤣🤣

> @"CoyoteOldMan"#p19965 the original Turing test "Turing proposed that a computer can be said to possess artificial intelligence if it can mimic human responses under specific conditions. The original Turing Test requires three terminals, each of which is physically separated from the other two. One terminal is operated by a computer, while the other two are operated by humans. During the test, one of the humans functions as the questioner, while the second human and the computer function as respondents. The questioner interrogates the respondents within a specific subject area, using a specified format and context. After a preset length of time or number of questions, the questioner is then asked to decide which respondent was human and which was a computer. The test is repeated many times. If the questioner makes the correct determination in half of the test runs or less, the computer is considered to have artificial intelligence because the questioner regards it as "just as human" as the human respondent." For others like me who may not know exactly what it is. Reading Lemoine's blog is very interesting, but his latest post has me questioning if he has the required detachment to make a rational assessment. > @"LMSC"#p19963 there are risks in areas you don’t want to give this technology a full control or exercise a decision; such automated decision, if left unsupervised, can wreck havoc one could argue this is already happening, not in a terminator robots kind of way but in the quiet ways government and corporations try to automate and expedite things like sieving through CVs, assessing traffic fine appeals and police face matching using algorithms. Not actively malicious but damaging for certain people nonetheless

> @"hthec"#p19969 his latest post has me questioning if he has the required detachment to make a rational assessment. I doubt he has… FWIW, I totally share your and @"LMSC"#16 's concerns. As someone once said: "to err is human, but to really mess things up, one needs a computer."

Some of my thoughts on the whole AI subject… A machine is a machine and even if it does have 'sentience' there is no moral ground on which it should not be turned off. The biggest threat of 'the singularity' will come not from the AI itself (because of 1) but due to some middle manager with his own promotional agenda wanting to 'get it done' to impress his bosses. I've worked for people like this and they're the bigger threat. A machine cannot connect itself to a network. AI might advance, but making its own 'robots' to connect it is years beyond the AI itself.

> @"Gagaryn"#p19967 Humans can’t help but anthropomorphise non human things, we do it with animals, cars and probably our coffee machine so it’s no surprise that we do it with AI. I think it's a bit more subtle than that - as 'culturally' we recognise humans as intelligent, and we build AIs to mimic and amplify and extend those behaviours… AI is largely an "antropomorphic" object by design, not just an antromorphised one. > @"LMSC"#p19968 On a lighter vein, imagine an AI driven smart lock around our home refusing to allow us in in a freezing winter! It's already here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiJLuvViHZU

Sentient AI?

DavecUK

hornbyben Personally, I think the chance of a skynet situation is so unlikely that it’s not really worth being concerned about. To me the biggest risk is bias and lack of transparency.

if it’s a truly sentient AI, the only logical decision would be to plan for our removal!

-Mac

I guess we could insist on the encoding of Asimov’s Laws.

hthec

hornbyben Thanks! I somehow missed that article. Guess it shows that I never click on the ‘Tech’ subsection.

I completely agree. It’s probably even more important to recognise and mitigate the widespread and insidious ways AI amplifies biases and discriminates quietly against some groups more than others. The scariest thing about it is that the average well-meaning person would think they’re being ever more fair and eliminating bias by relying on the ‘impartial’ judgement of a non-human algorithm. The various US congressional hearings on technology issues illustrate just how ignorant people in power can be.

hornbyben humanity will always chase advancement, so questioning how to do it safely is in my opinion far more valuable than just saying we shouldn’t

Humans will always chase profit too, or even just the prospect of it

hornbyben

hthec illustrate just how ignorant

Definitely. I think people think AI is actually intelligent. I much prefer the term machine learning, as I think that’s much more representative of what they actually do.

LMSC

hthec Humans will always chase profit too, or even just the prospect of it

This is the essence of the craze behind the AI! Sure, it has a place. We have already gone one step too far.

LMSC

hornbyben prefer the term machine learning

Absolutely. We can debate and discuss as long as we want. That’s why I said at the very beginning of this discussion that this iterative self-learning AI is created by humans. It will always be - at least for now. 😊

DavecUK

LMSC

Another example of human creation - robots have become racists and sexists

https://apple.news/AGWK55_86Rn-JCjkLLSShuQ

😉

DavecUK

LMSC Lets not tell Femi

Jony

Anybody help with BSOD 18m old laptop Mate book D14

JonWoo187

No clue this was being discussed as I have no use or respect for anything AI or the idiots trying to push it on society. They should remember anything created by mankind can easily be destroyed just the same.

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