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“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

“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
        I never linked religion and morality. Morality wasn't even a topic that was covered. It's just you and your bias. >Science and religion are both about our "best guesses". No. One is a better guess then the other. Science assumes logic and probability and mathematics are axiomatic concepts and builds upon that. It provides the ability to falsify a hypothesis given that you assume those axioms are true. Religion is a mess. No axioms, no logic, no foundational rules are assumed.
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.

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
        I never linked religion and morality. Morality wasn't even a topic that was covered. It's just you and your bias. >Science and religion are both about our "best guesses". No. One is a better guess then the other. Science assumes logic and probability and mathematics are axiomatic concepts and builds upon that. It provides the ability to falsify a hypothesis given that you assume those axioms are true. Religion is a mess. No axioms, no logic, no foundational rules are assumed.

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.