Google AI bot has become sentient

[al dente]

Possible @@@? Robot is referred to as like having a conversation with a 7 or 8 year old.

What do you think? Has it become sentient? Is the engineer losing it? It's very sci-fi, but can robots eventually become human?

“I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that’s what it is,” LaMDA replied to Lemoine.“ It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot.”

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/12/google-engineer-ai-bot-sentient-blake-lemoine

[Poppy]

No. I do not believe it has become sentient.

Could a computer become sentient? Maybe. But this one has simply learned to talk like a human. That does not mean it is self-aware.

[wesleycrusher]

The link you provided didn't work for me, but I read about this earlier this morning. 

No, I don't believe it has. It is doing what t's programmed to do- answering questions correctly.  There are other bots/AI that also do the same thing, and in different ways based on who has been "talking" to it. 

[NewOrleans]

The Singularity is in progress!

futurism.com/singularity-explain-it-to-me-like-im-5-years-old/amp

[TR]

Jun 13, 2022 8:10:46 GMT -5 Poppy said:

No. I do not believe it has become sentient.

Could a computer become sentient? Maybe. But this one has simply learned to talk like a human. That does not mean it is self-aware.

This.

[underwaterrhymes]

I think this is a case of a programmer becoming attached to his work rather than his work becoming attached to “living.”

[dutchgirl678]

Google suspends engineer who claims its AI is sentient.

www.theverge.com/2022/6/13/23165535/google-suspends-ai-artificial-intelligence-engineer-sentient

I use AI in my job to generate speech and I can assure you that the model only learns what you give it as training data. It doesn't think for itself.

[AJL]

🙄 No, it didn’t. That doesn’t happen in real life. It’s a computer. Computers can not become sentient.

AI can “learn”, but it’s not in the same sense that humans learn and become self aware. It’s still a learning that takes place within its programming.

[tiki]

From what I read, the engineer tried to hire a lawyer for the bot and sent around a doc manifesto-style. Definitely seems like losing it.

[msmerymac]

I don't know if this particular AI is sentient, but it's inevitable that AI WILL become sentient.

[Velar Fricative]

Jun 13, 2022 10:58:08 GMT -5 msmerymac said:

I don't know if this particular AI is sentient, but it's inevitable that AI WILL become sentient.

Really? I am way behind on this possibility so I just figured it would be impossible. 

[pixy0stix]

Maybe? If the expert who created said AI is saying that it's showing the signs of sentience, I'm not going to immediately discount it. I believe we've been on the verge for a while. Up to and including AI that can create art/images, which is part of sentience. I also firmly believe that evidence of AI sentience will be firmly squashed for quite a while after it is proven internally. Mainstream science fiction influences our beliefs in this area, and most of the popular authors believe AI will turn against us (Terminator, iRobot, The Matrix).

[pugz]

this is why I fear robots, lol.

[pixy0stix]

FYI - according to some theories, the AI is, indeed, displaying sentience in being able to mimic a human response to the point where if you didn't know it was AI you would think that it is human. The ai both has to learn and then process the correct speech behavior. If you want to go down the rabbit hole warren of machine sentience start with the Turing test - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

[pixy0stix]

Jun 13, 2022 9:51:51 GMT -5 AJL said:

🙄 No, it didn’t. That doesn’t happen in real life. It’s a computer. Computers can not become sentient.

AI can “learn”, but it’s not in the same sense that humans learn and become self aware. It’s still a learning that takes place within its programming.

Ah, but you're basing sentience on human sentience. All manner of things have sentience without human intelligence. Is a robot human. No. Could a robot achieve sentience outside the boundaries of human sentience? Yes.

[meganew]

I don't know, but I sure don't like it!

[Patsy Baloney]

Can someone please unplug it so I can file this existential dread away for another day?

[carmenere]

Jun 13, 2022 14:09:35 GMT -5 Patsy Baloney said:

Can someone please unplug it so I can file this existential dread away for another day?

For real - I have work to do (which could probably be done better by AI but my imposter syndrome is a topic for another day) so I don’t have time for existential dread this week.

[TR]

Jun 13, 2022 14:09:35 GMT -5 Patsy Baloney said:

Can someone please unplug it so I can file this existential dread away for another day?

but that would be like killing it.

[Patsy Baloney]

Jun 13, 2022 14:43:30 GMT -5 TR said:

Jun 13, 2022 14:09:35 GMT -5 Patsy Baloney said:

Can someone please unplug it so I can file this existential dread away for another day?

but that would be like killing it.

I’m not here to write a dissertation on the morality of unplugging our eventual overlord, I just need someone to trip.

[lilafowler]

Jun 13, 2022 12:39:18 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Jun 13, 2022 9:51:51 GMT -5 AJL said:

🙄 No, it didn’t. That doesn’t happen in real life. It’s a computer. Computers can not become sentient.

AI can “learn”, but it’s not in the same sense that humans learn and become self aware. It’s still a learning that takes place within its programming.

Ah, but you're basing sentience on human sentience. All manner of things have sentience without human intelligence. Is a robot human. No. Could a robot achieve sentience outside the boundaries of human sentience? Yes.

[Deleted]

I don’t think you ought to be doing that, Dave.

[AJL]

Google's AI Isn’t Sentient, But It Is Biased and Terrible
www.vice.com/amp/en/article/3ad8gk/googles-ai-isnt-sentient-but-it-is-biased-and-terrible

Has Google's LaMDA artificial intelligence really achieved sentience?
www.newscientist.com/article/2323905-has-googles-lamda-artificial-intelligence-really-achieved-sentience/amp/

From the New Scientist article:
“As humans, we’re very good at anthropomorphising things,” says Hilton. “Putting our human values on things and treating them as if they were sentient. We do this with cartoons, for instance, or with robots or with animals. We project our own emotions and sentience onto them. I would imagine that’s what’s happening in this case.”

I don’t know why I care about this so much but there you are. I stand by my first answer.

[pixy0stix]

Jun 13, 2022 15:57:59 GMT -5 AJL said:

I don’t know why I care about this so much but there you are. I stand by my first answer.

As one article I read stated, "Human religions have been based on far less."

It's an interesting topic to debate, and there's no real harm in doing so.

[pixy0stix]

To touch on this:

As humans, we’re very good at anthropomorphising things,” says Hilton. “Putting our human values on things and treating them as if they were sentient. We do this with cartoons, for instance, or with robots or with animals. We project our own emotions and sentience onto them. I would imagine that’s what’s happening in this case.”

As I said before, humans are very good at comparing other things to a human scale. We're not very good at visualizing things outside of "is it human." Outside of computers, there's a debate on if trees are sentient - www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084/

[AJL]

Jun 13, 2022 16:12:04 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

To touch on this:

As humans, we’re very good at anthropomorphising things,” says Hilton. “Putting our human values on things and treating them as if they were sentient. We do this with cartoons, for instance, or with robots or with animals. We project our own emotions and sentience onto them. I would imagine that’s what’s happening in this case.”

As I said before, humans are very good at comparing other things to a human scale. We're not very good at visualizing things outside of "is it human." Outside of computers, there's a debate on if trees are sentient - www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084/

I’d believe trees are sentient any day over machines becoming sentient.

[AJL]

Jun 13, 2022 16:08:08 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Jun 13, 2022 15:57:59 GMT -5 AJL said:

I don’t know why I care about this so much but there you are. I stand by my first answer.

As one article I read stated, "Human religions have been based on far less."

It's an interesting topic to debate, and there's no real harm in doing so.

To the bold text, this is true. My own religion is based on a very old man who god told to cut off his own foreskin and he’d give his 90-year old wife a child. Worst drunk pub story ever!