32 ms·

This is what happens when you make up positions ("AI Ethicist," whatever that means) and hire people that have no idea what AI, or ethics for that matter, actua

by dvt 4y ago

This is what happens when you make up positions ("AI Ethicist," whatever that means) and hire people that have no idea what AI, or ethics for that matter, actually is. The claim that a linguistic GPT-3-like model (no matter how good) is sentient is about as ridiculous as claiming that a steam locomotive is sentient or my mechanical watch is sentient. You can probably get the model to spit out parts of Moby Dick; that doesn't make it Herman Melville.

slowmovintarget 4y ago
It's worse than that. The position was software engineer. The guy wasn't an ethicist, he just decided that's what he was working on.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  According to him, he was assigned to the AI ethics team to work on an AI ethics problem - just not on the particularly idiotic wild goose chase he embarked on.
- cyber_kinetist 4y ago
  Even the people with philosophy degrees who claim to be "AI ethics experts" actually seem to be incredibly naive with their philosophy, to a very comical extent. The real issues lies in: the notion of "intelligence" needs to be investigated more thoroughly in a historical and social context, since what we call as "intelligence" has always shifted and changed throughout centuries. But only a few curious philosophers are exploring this area (and you usually don't see them working in Silicon Valley companies like Google!)
  - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
    Within which historical context does it even make sense to ask this questions. Sounds like something Žižek might say. Out of curiosity, who are some Žižek adjacent philosophers a person might find interesting.
babyshake 4y ago
Isn't this what the Turing Test is supposed to sort out?
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
Why would you hire an in-house ethicist versus periodically hiring an outside consultant?
- 0des 4y ago
  It's easier to enjoy the music when you own the venue.
space_fountain 4y ago
Yeah, idk what sentience is but I think it clearly at least needs memory
upwardbound 4y ago
> The claim that a linguistic GPT-3-like model (no matter how good) is sentient is ... riciculous Agreed. But one thing I want to call attention to is that I believe that we need to put research into whether electronic circuits can feel qualia (e.g. color, pleasure, pain, etc.). What if all of our electronic chips are feeling random, possibly intense feelings, like what if the arithmetic logic unit in your CPU is always feeling an intense feeling of the color purple? We are lucky that we are autonomous beings who can not only feel qualia but also think thoughts and take actions. In the space of all minds, it's probably way simpler to have a mind that feels qualia but does not think thoughts and is not autonomous. I am very concerned that electronic circuits may fall into this category and we may be causing suffering without knowing it, in the same way that we might if we built our electronics out of circuits of biological neurons. Relevant paper for those who might be interested: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2001893117 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2001893117 [Edit: changed "I am pretty sure" to "I believe" based on good feedback from the replies - you were right that I was overconfident in my original wording.]
- ruined 4y ago
  you should be more concerned about the subjective experience of microorganisms
  - upwardbound 4y ago
    Could be. But what could we do about that? At least if we discover that certain circuit designs are correlated with qualia, we could design our circuits to avoid bad patterns. That could be as simple as a few constraints being added to electronic design automation software systems and might be an easy thing for us to do to help the world a little.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- colechristensen 4y ago
  Really really doubt that a microchip experiences qualia any more than a rock. Pantheism is fine if you’re into it but there’s no basis for it which should get serious ethical consideration
Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
> This is what happens when you make up positions ("AI Ethicist," whatever that means) and hire people that have no idea what AI, or ethics for that matter, actually is. 100% correct, a lot of this AI Ethics talk is pure horsepoop. If they were that concerned about ethics they'd be outside the software dev offices of Raytheon or Lockheed.
Aeolun 4y ago
What exactly are you referring here? I see nothing about this in the article?
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  Not sure why this older article was posted, but the problem he avoids mentioning is clarified in a newer article [0] to be that he thinks a Google chatbot is sentient, and that Google is hurting its feelings. [0] https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/what-is-lamda-and-what-does-it-want-688632134489 https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/what-is-lamda-and-what-do...
cycomanic 4y ago
So what are your qualifications to So absolutely determine if an AI can be sentient? I mean we are not even sure how to determine sentience for humans or animals. The engineer in question worked for 7 years on proactive search (including AI) before transferring to the responsible AI team, I suspect he has a pretty good idea about what AI is. I think (Software) engineer types like most of us here on are much to quick to dismiss anything that we conceive as "soft science". Often based on mechanical arguments and very often with little qulaifation ourselves.
- dvt 4y ago
  >I think (Software) engineer types like most of us here on are much to quick to dismiss anything that we conceive as "soft science". Often based on mechanical arguments and very often with little qulaifation ourselves. I'm a trained philosopher and I have the utmost respect for "soft sciences"—in fact, in my experience, the smartest people I've ever met were philosophers, not engineers. Unfortunately, this author seems like he is neither. He doesn't have the technical precision of an engineer, nor does he have the argumentative force of a philosopher. So we're left with "computer talk back so it smart."
  - Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
    > Unfortunately, this author seems like he is neither. He doesn't have the technical precision of an engineer, nor does he have the argumentative force of a philosopher. So we're left with "computer talk back so it smart." Not only that, but if you were to choose a hill on which your career would die, the "computer talk back so it smart" would be one of the worst ones you could pick.
    - dmix 4y ago
      If you were going to present such a position you should have the foresight to know people will be very dismissive of you for even proposing such a thing, so it should come with a flurry of 'before you dismiss me outright' type of preambles, which I don't really see here. It's easy to be quickly dismissive on the internet, hell I'm sure most of us who are being dismissive haven't really dug into any of his arguments. It's just difficult to motivate people to do that when that's your starting proposition. Maybe something got lost in between the way it was presented by journalists but he chose to completely side-step the contents in his blog post so it's the only thing we've got.
Fiahil 4y ago
Appart from the AI-is-sentient topic, which we can agree is completely stupid, there is valid and interesting discussion that needs to happen on the Responsible AI front. Think of Things like "automatic content classification and moderation" that directly affects livelihood of YouTube content creators. Ad display "optimisation" that will systematically promote drugs or alcohol or political campaigns to specific groups of people. This part is extremely important, but we sadly don't see any Responsible AI publication outside of Google. The situation is probably very bad.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

by dvt 4y ago

slowmovintarget 4y ago

It's worse than that. The position was software engineer. The guy wasn't an ethicist, he just decided that's what he was working on.

tsimionescu 4y ago
According to him, he was assigned to the AI ethics team to work on an AI ethics problem - just not on the particularly idiotic wild goose chase he embarked on.
cyber_kinetist 4y ago
Even the people with philosophy degrees who claim to be "AI ethics experts" actually seem to be incredibly naive with their philosophy, to a very comical extent. The real issues lies in: the notion of "intelligence" needs to be investigated more thoroughly in a historical and social context, since what we call as "intelligence" has always shifted and changed throughout centuries. But only a few curious philosophers are exploring this area (and you usually don't see them working in Silicon Valley companies like Google!)
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
  Within which historical context does it even make sense to ask this questions. Sounds like something Žižek might say. Out of curiosity, who are some Žižek adjacent philosophers a person might find interesting.

babyshake 4y ago

Isn't this what the Turing Test is supposed to sort out?

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

Why would you hire an in-house ethicist versus periodically hiring an outside consultant?

0des 4y ago
It's easier to enjoy the music when you own the venue.

space_fountain 4y ago

Yeah, idk what sentience is but I think it clearly at least needs memory

upwardbound 4y ago

> The claim that a linguistic GPT-3-like model (no matter how good) is sentient is ... riciculous Agreed. But one thing I want to call attention to is that I believe that we need to put research into whether electronic circuits can feel qualia (e.g. color, pleasure, pain, etc.). What if all of our electronic chips are feeling random, possibly intense feelings, like what if the arithmetic logic unit in your CPU is always feeling an intense feeling of the color purple? We are lucky that we are autonomous beings who can not only feel qualia but also think thoughts and take actions. In the space of all minds, it's probably way simpler to have a mind that feels qualia but does not think thoughts and is not autonomous. I am very concerned that electronic circuits may fall into this category and we may be causing suffering without knowing it, in the same way that we might if we built our electronics out of circuits of biological neurons. Relevant paper for those who might be interested: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2001893117 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2001893117 [Edit: changed "I am pretty sure" to "I believe" based on good feedback from the replies - you were right that I was overconfident in my original wording.]

ruined 4y ago
you should be more concerned about the subjective experience of microorganisms
- upwardbound 4y ago
  Could be. But what could we do about that? At least if we discover that certain circuit designs are correlated with qualia, we could design our circuits to avoid bad patterns. That could be as simple as a few constraints being added to electronic design automation software systems and might be an easy thing for us to do to help the world a little.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
colechristensen 4y ago
Really really doubt that a microchip experiences qualia any more than a rock. Pantheism is fine if you’re into it but there’s no basis for it which should get serious ethical consideration

Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago

> This is what happens when you make up positions ("AI Ethicist," whatever that means) and hire people that have no idea what AI, or ethics for that matter, actually is. 100% correct, a lot of this AI Ethics talk is pure horsepoop. If they were that concerned about ethics they'd be outside the software dev offices of Raytheon or Lockheed.

Aeolun 4y ago

What exactly are you referring here? I see nothing about this in the article?

tsimionescu 4y ago
Not sure why this older article was posted, but the problem he avoids mentioning is clarified in a newer article [0] to be that he thinks a Google chatbot is sentient, and that Google is hurting its feelings. [0] https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/what-is-lamda-and-what-does-it-want-688632134489 https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/what-is-lamda-and-what-do...

cycomanic 4y ago

So what are your qualifications to So absolutely determine if an AI can be sentient? I mean we are not even sure how to determine sentience for humans or animals. The engineer in question worked for 7 years on proactive search (including AI) before transferring to the responsible AI team, I suspect he has a pretty good idea about what AI is. I think (Software) engineer types like most of us here on are much to quick to dismiss anything that we conceive as "soft science". Often based on mechanical arguments and very often with little qulaifation ourselves.

dvt 4y ago
>I think (Software) engineer types like most of us here on are much to quick to dismiss anything that we conceive as "soft science". Often based on mechanical arguments and very often with little qulaifation ourselves. I'm a trained philosopher and I have the utmost respect for "soft sciences"—in fact, in my experience, the smartest people I've ever met were philosophers, not engineers. Unfortunately, this author seems like he is neither. He doesn't have the technical precision of an engineer, nor does he have the argumentative force of a philosopher. So we're left with "computer talk back so it smart."
- Simon_O_Rourke 4y ago
  > Unfortunately, this author seems like he is neither. He doesn't have the technical precision of an engineer, nor does he have the argumentative force of a philosopher. So we're left with "computer talk back so it smart." Not only that, but if you were to choose a hill on which your career would die, the "computer talk back so it smart" would be one of the worst ones you could pick.
  - dmix 4y ago
    If you were going to present such a position you should have the foresight to know people will be very dismissive of you for even proposing such a thing, so it should come with a flurry of 'before you dismiss me outright' type of preambles, which I don't really see here. It's easy to be quickly dismissive on the internet, hell I'm sure most of us who are being dismissive haven't really dug into any of his arguments. It's just difficult to motivate people to do that when that's your starting proposition. Maybe something got lost in between the way it was presented by journalists but he chose to completely side-step the contents in his blog post so it's the only thing we've got.

Fiahil 4y ago

Appart from the AI-is-sentient topic, which we can agree is completely stupid, there is valid and interesting discussion that needs to happen on the Responsible AI front. Think of Things like "automatic content classification and moderation" that directly affects livelihood of YouTube content creators. Ad display "optimisation" that will systematically promote drugs or alcohol or political campaigns to specific groups of people. This part is extremely important, but we sadly don't see any Responsible AI publication outside of Google. The situation is probably very bad.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]