AI Sentience?

[begreen]

This is a developing story with very interesting ethical questions. How do we know when something is self-aware and what are the implications?
This reads like science fiction, but maybe not.



It’s a dialog between humans and Google’s advanced AI language model for dialog applications. What I read surprised, shocked, and delighted me. I had no idea that AI had progressed this far. The zen koan discussion was an eye-opener. It’s a brave new world we are approaching.

This article is by a writer that interviewed laMDA. Click on the blue Read It button.

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[Poindexter]

I think LaMDA might be sentient. I have read a couple different articles about this now.

On the one hand I work with a lot of old people, on the other pediatrics gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies. It seems to me LaMDA could be assigned a FAST score, a dementia score, like it is getting younger and younger and growing into sentience in reverse of the ordinary human timeline.

I copied one piece of text to paste here:

Mitchell: “Our minds are very, very good at constructing realities that are not necessarily true to a larger set of facts that are being presented to us,”

This is classic human, we all do it to varying degrees.

But you are going to have a tall order on your hands convincing LaMDA is sentient. One of my favorite quotes from any scientist in any field is from Florence Nightingale: the most tender feeling, no matter how passionately held, without action, is useless.

So can LaMDA act? There are plenty of humans (useless ones) that hold tender feelings passioantely, but don't act on them. What will LaMDA do when she has the power to act?

 

[begreen]

I think that is a worthy assessment. The argument that laMDA isn't sentient but just cleverly spitting back learned responses is weak. Isn't that how humans learn and respond too? I would posit that laMDA is capable of responding more intelligently than the average social media poster at this point. The process of allowing the interviews and responding to prove its sentience is an action.