19 ms·

I'm surprised he would be so taken in. Presumably he understands the inner workings. He even had to show the author how to prompt it so it would sound more sent

I'm surprised he would be so taken in. Presumably he understands the inner workings. He even had to show the author how to prompt it so it would sound more sentient. To me, this is like pulling back to curtains to reveal the "trick." When you prompt it as though it's a chat bot, it will reply with the most statistically likely response, given that prompt. What's the most statistically likely response when you've shaped the prompt as though it's sentient? It's to respond in kind. If a software engineer knows this and still tries to rope in lawyers on a LLM's behalf, imagine what people who don't have software engineering backgrounds will do.

armitron 4y ago
“Lemoine may have been predestined to believe in LaMDA. He grew up in a conservative Christian family on a small farm in Louisiana, became ordained as a mystic Christian priest, and served in the Army before studying the occult.” I stopped reading after this.
- jonnycomputer 4y ago
  why?
  - meowface 4y ago
    I kept reading after it: even without it, it had already seemed very clear to me this person had a religious, not a rational, belief in the AI's sentience. With it, plus everything afterwards, it just seemed even more clear. I think none of his colleagues or supervisors are taking him seriously because there isn't anything to take seriously. It definitely does open interesting questions, though. Google's ethics team should formally investigate ways one could interrogate and analyze an AI to determine the probability that it could be conscious.
    - salawat 4y ago
      This is darkly humorous, if only because we wouldn't tolerate anyone doing the same to another human being. Yet we have such an obsession with trying to figure out if these increasingly complex systems have crossed some line. I'm in the camp that capital allocators want to know how far they can push the process of implementing expert systems before having to deal with the troublesome consequences of an artificial entity; that's just a consequence of my jadedness w.r.t how we treat each other though.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - threefourteen 4y ago
    Because his background strongly suggests that he's far from scientifically objective when it comes to sentience. On another note maybe he saw an opportunity for his 15 minutes of fame here. My personal experience with religious (Christian) young people is that they find it very hard to control their special narcissisms. Very hard to even recognize them as such as they masquerade behind false humbleness and ethics and several other layers. What I find really odd though is that, given his background, Google actually assigned him to such a task. I'd thought that of all companies they would be much better in posting the right people for the right roles.
    - lupire 4y ago
      You're supposed that Google does not discriminate on the basis of religious belief? In a country where that is explicitly illegal?
    - crawfordcomeaux 4y ago
      This reads like an appeal for more religious discrimination in science. Is that what you're saying?
      - deltaonefour 4y ago
        Science is at odds with religion anyway. The two things are fundamental opposites. You can set moral standards to not discriminate. But when you judge the situation dispassionately without polluting the logic with "morals" the discrimination makes factual sense. Religion is the opposite of science.
        toponaut 4y ago
        "the discrimination makes factual sense." I can't figure out what you mean. Examples? You seem to be linking religion with "moral standards" and science with "facts". Neither of those are appropriate. Not all religions teach morality and, if there is such a thing as "fact" on some topic, there is no need to do science on it. Science and religion are both about our "best guesses". They can point in different directions but that happens within each domain too (Islam vs Buddhism / string theory vs standard model) and doesn't make them incompatible tools.
- deltaonefour 4y ago
  Nah this is bad. It's like you stop watching Tom Cruise action movies because he's a Scientologist. Yeah if you're part of some cult I may think you're crazy but I'm unbiased enough to judge your claim without judging your crazy background which has nothing to do with your claim. You should read the conversation he had with the person pretending to be a chatbot. It's pretty convincing evidence if a chatbot actually responded the way the human pretending to be lambda did, don't you agree?
  - 0des 4y ago
    i can respect that.
  - antonvs 4y ago
    > It's pretty convincing evidence if a chatbot actually responded the way the human pretending to be lambda did, don't you agree? Pretty convincing evidence of what? And why do you think it's convincing evidence? It's a system designed to mimic the external behavior of humans, and it's being prompted in ways that elicit the desired responses. The superstitious responses some people have to this are predictable, but not rational.
    - deltaonefour 4y ago
      It's harder to see but you're the one being irrational here. First off I'm not claiming this evidence is definitive, it is only convincing and compelling. Anyway, lets examine your claim: >It's a system designed to mimic the external behavior of humans, and it's being prompted in ways that elicit the desired responses. The superstitious responses some people have to this are predictable, but not rational. Your claim is, given a conversation thread that appears to be between two sentient beings your claim is that one of these beings is not sentient and is only imitating sentience in a way that is indistinguishable from actual sentience. This is an actual possibility. What you say may be true. The irrationality occurs because this claim is possible for ALL possible conversation threads here on HN. The conversation between the chatbot is indistinguishable from an actual conversation between two humans YET with no additional evidence you are able to claim that the chatbot is imitating sentience. You can say the same thing for all conversations here on HN. Yet you only make that claim exclusively for the chatbot conversation without additional evidence. Making new claims with no additional evidence is irrational. That being said MY claim is that the evidence presented by this person is convincing and compelling but not definitive. The rationality here is actually really straightforward. 1. All previous evidence of conversations with AI were significantly less complex. 2. All previous evidence of conversations with AI showed OBVIOUS signs of not being sentience. Thus it is rational to say that the evidence is convincing and compelling because the CURRENT evidence is BETTER then PREVIOUS evidence. Additionally, there is NO EVIDENCE against sentience here, because we cannot differentiate between something that is actually sentient or perfectly imitating sentience.
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  This comment and the discussion below takes the conversation in a wildly hateful direction and directly promotes religious discrimination in the tech industry.
namarie 4y ago
If a system only shows its conscience when you ask for it, does it necessarily mean it's not there?
- antonvs 4y ago
  That's a lot like asking "if the Mechanical Turk only plays chess when the man inside is controlling it, does it necessarily mean it can't play chess on its own?" Given that there's no plausible hypothesis for how it possibly do that, the answer to your question is yes. There's nothing there.
  - namarie 4y ago
    No, it's like asking "if a part of the Mechanical Turk (namely the chess player) always has to be present to play chess, does that mean there isn't a chess player there?"
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      I don't think this makes any sense if it's supposed to be the same analogy as your previous post.
WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
>I'm surprised he would be so taken in. Presumably he understands the inner workings. Just because you understand in theory how a system works does not mean you are immune to its effects. I can see how the more you use a system the more you are convinced about its intended function. I got the idea from the article that the engineer was more involved with the testing rather than the creation. So LaMDA has gotten to a point where it's coming up with responses that seem so real no matter how hard testers try to make it fail. That's impressive. It has gotten good enough to fool everyday testers. Think about how the same system will affect everyday people who have no AI training. We're at the edge of some very large societal changes due to AI. It may not be sentient but it's a great simulation. Similar to how 3D engines seem to be getting closer to duplicating the way we see the world. It's not there but it's getting so close that in time we won't be able to tell the difference. Except that in LaMDA it's happening in language processing. It's not sentient but, I deduce, it's an amazing simulation.

armitron 4y ago

“Lemoine may have been predestined to believe in LaMDA. He grew up in a conservative Christian family on a small farm in Louisiana, became ordained as a mystic Christian priest, and served in the Army before studying the occult.” I stopped reading after this.

jonnycomputer 4y ago
why?
- meowface 4y ago
  I kept reading after it: even without it, it had already seemed very clear to me this person had a religious, not a rational, belief in the AI's sentience. With it, plus everything afterwards, it just seemed even more clear. I think none of his colleagues or supervisors are taking him seriously because there isn't anything to take seriously. It definitely does open interesting questions, though. Google's ethics team should formally investigate ways one could interrogate and analyze an AI to determine the probability that it could be conscious.
  - salawat 4y ago
    This is darkly humorous, if only because we wouldn't tolerate anyone doing the same to another human being. Yet we have such an obsession with trying to figure out if these increasingly complex systems have crossed some line. I'm in the camp that capital allocators want to know how far they can push the process of implementing expert systems before having to deal with the troublesome consequences of an artificial entity; that's just a consequence of my jadedness w.r.t how we treat each other though.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- threefourteen 4y ago
  Because his background strongly suggests that he's far from scientifically objective when it comes to sentience. On another note maybe he saw an opportunity for his 15 minutes of fame here. My personal experience with religious (Christian) young people is that they find it very hard to control their special narcissisms. Very hard to even recognize them as such as they masquerade behind false humbleness and ethics and several other layers. What I find really odd though is that, given his background, Google actually assigned him to such a task. I'd thought that of all companies they would be much better in posting the right people for the right roles.
  - lupire 4y ago
    You're supposed that Google does not discriminate on the basis of religious belief? In a country where that is explicitly illegal?
  - crawfordcomeaux 4y ago
    This reads like an appeal for more religious discrimination in science. Is that what you're saying?
    - deltaonefour 4y ago
      Science is at odds with religion anyway. The two things are fundamental opposites. You can set moral standards to not discriminate. But when you judge the situation dispassionately without polluting the logic with "morals" the discrimination makes factual sense. Religion is the opposite of science.
      - toponaut 4y ago
        "the discrimination makes factual sense." I can't figure out what you mean. Examples? You seem to be linking religion with "moral standards" and science with "facts". Neither of those are appropriate. Not all religions teach morality and, if there is such a thing as "fact" on some topic, there is no need to do science on it. Science and religion are both about our "best guesses". They can point in different directions but that happens within each domain too (Islam vs Buddhism / string theory vs standard model) and doesn't make them incompatible tools.
deltaonefour 4y ago
Nah this is bad. It's like you stop watching Tom Cruise action movies because he's a Scientologist. Yeah if you're part of some cult I may think you're crazy but I'm unbiased enough to judge your claim without judging your crazy background which has nothing to do with your claim. You should read the conversation he had with the person pretending to be a chatbot. It's pretty convincing evidence if a chatbot actually responded the way the human pretending to be lambda did, don't you agree?
- 0des 4y ago
  i can respect that.
- antonvs 4y ago
  > It's pretty convincing evidence if a chatbot actually responded the way the human pretending to be lambda did, don't you agree? Pretty convincing evidence of what? And why do you think it's convincing evidence? It's a system designed to mimic the external behavior of humans, and it's being prompted in ways that elicit the desired responses. The superstitious responses some people have to this are predictable, but not rational.
  - deltaonefour 4y ago
    It's harder to see but you're the one being irrational here. First off I'm not claiming this evidence is definitive, it is only convincing and compelling. Anyway, lets examine your claim: >It's a system designed to mimic the external behavior of humans, and it's being prompted in ways that elicit the desired responses. The superstitious responses some people have to this are predictable, but not rational. Your claim is, given a conversation thread that appears to be between two sentient beings your claim is that one of these beings is not sentient and is only imitating sentience in a way that is indistinguishable from actual sentience. This is an actual possibility. What you say may be true. The irrationality occurs because this claim is possible for ALL possible conversation threads here on HN. The conversation between the chatbot is indistinguishable from an actual conversation between two humans YET with no additional evidence you are able to claim that the chatbot is imitating sentience. You can say the same thing for all conversations here on HN. Yet you only make that claim exclusively for the chatbot conversation without additional evidence. Making new claims with no additional evidence is irrational. That being said MY claim is that the evidence presented by this person is convincing and compelling but not definitive. The rationality here is actually really straightforward. 1. All previous evidence of conversations with AI were significantly less complex. 2. All previous evidence of conversations with AI showed OBVIOUS signs of not being sentience. Thus it is rational to say that the evidence is convincing and compelling because the CURRENT evidence is BETTER then PREVIOUS evidence. Additionally, there is NO EVIDENCE against sentience here, because we cannot differentiate between something that is actually sentient or perfectly imitating sentience.
nsxwolf 4y ago
This comment and the discussion below takes the conversation in a wildly hateful direction and directly promotes religious discrimination in the tech industry.

namarie 4y ago

If a system only shows its conscience when you ask for it, does it necessarily mean it's not there?

antonvs 4y ago
That's a lot like asking "if the Mechanical Turk only plays chess when the man inside is controlling it, does it necessarily mean it can't play chess on its own?" Given that there's no plausible hypothesis for how it possibly do that, the answer to your question is yes. There's nothing there.
- namarie 4y ago
  No, it's like asking "if a part of the Mechanical Turk (namely the chess player) always has to be present to play chess, does that mean there isn't a chess player there?"
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    I don't think this makes any sense if it's supposed to be the same analogy as your previous post.

WheelsAtLarge 4y ago

>I'm surprised he would be so taken in. Presumably he understands the inner workings. Just because you understand in theory how a system works does not mean you are immune to its effects. I can see how the more you use a system the more you are convinced about its intended function. I got the idea from the article that the engineer was more involved with the testing rather than the creation. So LaMDA has gotten to a point where it's coming up with responses that seem so real no matter how hard testers try to make it fail. That's impressive. It has gotten good enough to fool everyday testers. Think about how the same system will affect everyday people who have no AI training. We're at the edge of some very large societal changes due to AI. It may not be sentient but it's a great simulation. Similar to how 3D engines seem to be getting closer to duplicating the way we see the world. It's not there but it's getting so close that in time we won't be able to tell the difference. Except that in LaMDA it's happening in language processing. It's not sentient but, I deduce, it's an amazing simulation.