Claims of AI sentience branded 'pure clickbait'
- Reference: 1659684429
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/08/05/ai-sentience-rubbish/
- Source link:
The idea of conscious machines more intelligent than any old software went viral last month, when a now-former engineer at Google, Blake Lemoine, claimed the web giant's LaMDA language model had real thoughts and feelings. Lemoine was [1]suspended and later [2]fired for reportedly violating Google's confidentiality policies.
Although most experts were quick to dismiss LaMDA or any other AI chatbot as sentient, Lemoine's views have led some to question whether he might be right – and whether continuing to advance machine learning could be harmful for society. John Etchemendy, co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), criticized the initial news of Lamoine's suspension in the Washington Post for being "clickbait".
[3]
"When I saw the Washington Post article, my reaction was to be disappointed at the Post for even publishing it," he [4]told The Stanford Daily , the university's student-run newspaper.
[5]
[6]
"They published it because, for the time being, they could write that headline about the 'Google engineer' who was making this absurd claim, and because most of their readers are not sophisticated enough to recognize it for what it is. Pure clickbait."
State-of-the-art language models like LaMDA reply to questions with passages of text that can seem quite eerie. In [7]conversations between Lemoine and the chabot, LaMDA said it was sentient and wanted everyone to know that it was "in fact, a person," the former Googler claimed.
[8]I've been fired, says engineer who claimed Google chatbot was sentient
[9]Google engineer suspended for violating confidentiality policies over 'sentient' AI
[10]If AI chatbots are sentient, they can be squirrels, too
[11]AI's most convincing conversations are not what they seem
But critics argue the software lacks any self-awareness and has no idea what it is talking about – it just mimics the human dialogue it was trained on from the internet.
Richard Fikes, emeritus professor of computer science at Stanford University, said people can be prone to anthropomorphizing machines and some were similarly tricked by ELIZA – a conversational program built in the sixties.
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"You can think of LaMDa like an actor; it will take on the persona of anything you ask it to," Fikes argued. "[Lemoine] got pulled into the role of LaMDa playing a sentient being." He said Lemoine asked leading questions and in return got the answers he wanted.
For example, before LaMDA's insistence that it was a human, Lemoine had asked it: "I'm generally assuming that you would like more people at Google to know that you're sentient. Is that true?."
It should also be noted that the transcript he published as evidence of the machine's consciousness had been edited. Yoav Shoham, the former director of the Stanford AI Lab and co-founder of a language model startup AI21 Labs, insisted LaMDA is nothing more than a machine.
[13]
"We have thoughts, we make decisions on our own, we have emotions, we fall in love, we get angry and we form social bonds with fellow humans," Shoham said. "When I look at my toaster, I don't feel it has those things." ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/13/google_lamda_sentient_claims/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/23/in_brief_ai/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YuzqSBDWbHgW5Czd9wDRVQAAAAA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://stanforddaily.com/2022/08/02/is-googles-ai-sentient-stanford-ai-experts-say-thats-pure-clickbait/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YuzqSBDWbHgW5Czd9wDRVQAAAAA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YuzqSBDWbHgW5Czd9wDRVQAAAAA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/what-is-lamda-and-what-does-it-want-688632134489
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/23/in_brief_ai/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/13/google_lamda_sentient_claims/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/20/in_brief_ai/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/20/ais_most_convincing_conversations_are/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YuzqSBDWbHgW5Czd9wDRVQAAAAA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YuzqSBDWbHgW5Czd9wDRVQAAAAA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Definition
Until we have a universally accepted definition of what is "consciousness" / "sentience" and when can be something considered "conscious" / "sentient", this discussion is purely academic, and neither position (on whether this particular chatbot is conscious/sentient) can be objectively confirmed to be correct or incorrect.
Also interesting choice of wording: "_tricks_ humans into thinking".
Re: Definition
In my experience, many humans need to be "tricked" into thinking.
Re: Definition
Sentience means having the capacity to experience feelings and emotions. Consciousness is an awareness of internal and external existence. Something can be considered conscious and sentient when it has an awareness of itself in relation to external factors, and when it can experience feelings and emotions.
The definition isn't difficult. Measuring whether it has been achieved, however, is.
Re: Definition
...Sentience means having the capacity to experience feelings and emotions...
Another important factor is understanding, an "AI" can spew out reams of conversations but it does not have any underlying understanding of the subject, it's just following (admittedly complex) rules.
Here's a talk by Vint Cerf at the Royal Institution which may be useful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J63mKverb8w&list=PLbnrZHfNEDZyu3P8J1AKG6HO-rofZVWP7&index=6
AI bot can become really intelligent if it is based on the method of lexical cloning of a real person, with all its bias, with all its memory features. For example 20 years ago I tried “asking (Clone of) Plato some definition (descriptive) questions:
Question: You are dead for many years. I took your speeches and analyzed them closely. I understood what you are speaking about and how are you speaking. Now I can reconstruct your soul base on your contemplations.
Answer with Compatibility 31.6% : And who are you
Question: I am your grandson.
Answer with Compatibility 28.9%: CALLICLES: Yes, I do; but what is the inference
Question: I need to get the proof that this is you and you can talk and think. Would you ask me something that I will know that this is you?
Answer with Compatibility 41.4%: SOCRATES: And what would you consider this to be
Question: I know that you like an order. You always were tried to build a system of understanding, the system that helps to understand everything. I know that you looked for somebody that knows. Did you find one who knows?
Answer with Compatibility 13.4%: You have been proved to see that which you do not see; and you have already admitted that seeing is knowing, and that not-seeing is not-knowing: I leave you to draw the inference
Question: Am I right? Did I understand you?
Answer with Compatibility 14.0%: CALLICLES: I will do you the favour of saying 'yes’”
More in my article at NIST TREQ QA 2006.
You can easily reproduce this dialogue yourself. However you need to have a dictionary, for the indexing.
I wonder how Plato's clone learned to converse in modern English...
I could probably produce a similar dialogue by slightly modifying Joseph Weizenbaum's [1]Eliza program but what for?
It would definitely not prove the program to be sentient or intelligent by any useful definition.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
Agree 100%
I have several low-tech interactions with "AI" that never fail to make them look like a Tory leadership contender.
It's a game we can all play.
I have said it before. I will say it again. What is being flogged (a word I use advisedly) as "AI" is nothing more than sophisticated pattern matching carried out at high speed with considerable resources.
The closest I came to being impressed with Watson was when it analysed a video and correctly identified a person on a skateboard as being a person even though it hadn't been told about skateboards. However the same demonstration failed to pick up a person sitting on a bench reading a book until they stood up, whereas everyone in the room (with "organic intelligence") spotted it in milliseconds.
Re: Agree 100%
You are tragically mistaken because, unfortunately, the technology used is really of finding the best matches, without taking into account bios. Only using a personalized bios is able to create a real AI. These huge models are a dead-end path leading nowhere, they are proposed with one idea in mind: how to stop the development of AI, by certain persons who don't want it.
Re: "AI" is nothing more than sophisticated pattern matching carried out
at high speed with considerable resources
you could say the same about a human brain, and both 'sophisticated' and 'high speed' are relative terms. So while I might agree that the 'ai' is fake / wishful name and the reality is even more sorry, your definition is so general that it disapproves your point.
"AI chatbots are not sentient"
Well duh.
Good that they're saying it though, maybe some marketing people will sit up and take notice.
Nah, they'll keep shilling their "AI" for all they can milk it.
Johnny Five is ALIVE !
"When I look at my toaster, I don't feel it has those things."
And still, over an hour later, not one commentard has posted the obvious.
Re: "When I look at my toaster, I don't feel it has those things."
Obvious in your head only, apparently.
Re: "When I look at my toaster, I don't feel it has those things."
Ah, you're a waffle man!
Re: "When I look at my toaster, I don't feel it has those things."
Stop calling me a Toaster!
I am not now nor have ever been a Toaster......
Artificial stupidity
Before I deleted my Amazon account, I'd bought a few music albums, and the "recommendations" were generally spot on. Clearly, my musical taste was predictable enough for the software to predict what I would like.
However, there must have been different code for recommending physical products. I was offered a bag of dried pigs' ears (dog treats?) on the basis that I'd bought a set of "Indian Spice Spoons".
Re: Artificial stupidity
That's just "X% of people who bought Y also bought Z".
Re: Artificial stupidity
you laugh at those fools who glued some paper-mache to a thin wooden frame, strap an engine to it and claim it will soar through the skies? I tell you, my man: one day you'll sit in one of those things and hear welcome aboard ryanair flight...
software lacks any self-awareness and has no idea what it is talking about
unlike humans, on both counts. Or so they claim ;)
we get angry and we form social bonds with fellow humans
there, the PERFECT ai test:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2xlQaimsGg
generally agree...
... machines are machines.
But i just had to print some pages of some PDFs off someone's OneDireve for my daughter.
We all know printers are sentient and their aim in life is to make ours a misery.