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Anti-intellectual? Interesting. I had the opposite thought: that the article aims at too high a level to be accessible for the common reader who doesn't know wh

Anti-intellectual? Interesting. I had the opposite thought: that the article aims at too high a level to be accessible for the common reader who doesn't know what "parametric functions in higher dimensions" are. But having said that, I think you are not being fair to both sides: you are taking some researcher's gut feeling at face value while requiring the rebuttal to start with a formal definition of what intelligence and sentience are. > This refusal to consider has the effect of making me think there might be something really interesting going on. I know I am just a guy on the internet who has no right to tell you how to live your life, but I would strongly advice you against this line of thinking. At best it doesn't lead anywhere productive, and at worse you end up shooting an AR-15 inside a pizza restaurant while trying to save children trapped in a nonexistent basement.

dr_dshiv 4y ago
Yes, well, our brains have parametric functions in higher dimensions. Waving around big words and an a priori dismissal is precisely what makes this article anti-intellectual. And don’t accuse me of being on a path to mass murder. I find that demeaning and impolite.
- probably_wrong 4y ago
  For the record, I am not accusing you of being on path to a mass murder. I was pointing out that this idea of "if they are trying to deny it then it must be true" is how normal people end up believing in all kind of conspiracy theories. The "AR-15 inside a pizza restaurant" is a reference to the popular incident at the height of the Pizzagate conspiracy [1]. No one in that incident was injured. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory#Criminal_responses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory#Cr...
rendall 4y ago
Defining terms is pretty essential. Blake Lemoine seems to be defining it in religious terms, and Gary Marcus seems to be responding to that. I suspect that sentience by any definition will always be irrelevant when it comes to AI. Humans desperately seek companionship, connection and community. When AI comes to be able to offer that to human beings, it won't be through a process that we would consider analogous to our own sentience (whatever that means) but that will be irrelevant: we will nevertheless be comforted. I do find it interesting that the arguments against LaMDA's sentience seem to amount to "it cannot be sentient because the process by which it arrives at its responses is understood and simple", which indicates that on some implicit, unspoken level sentience is defined for some people as there must be some mystery or unknown in order to be true sentience.
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  > there must be some mystery or unknown Note that this also seems to be the case with artificial intelligence in general. It is the moving goalpost issue. “Oh, if I understand how the system works, then it can’t really be AI.” I’ve always thought that silly—but maybe it is because of the implicit expectation for sentience?
  - rendall 4y ago
    IIRC, Ray Kurzweil predicted just this in his book "The Age of Spiritual Machines" - that we will have AI long before it's generally recognized, because humans will have a hard time conceptually accepting its existence. Given the outraged tone of the article, I can see that clearly.
    - bananaFace69 4y ago

dr_dshiv 4y ago

Yes, well, our brains have parametric functions in higher dimensions. Waving around big words and an a priori dismissal is precisely what makes this article anti-intellectual. And don’t accuse me of being on a path to mass murder. I find that demeaning and impolite.

probably_wrong 4y ago
For the record, I am not accusing you of being on path to a mass murder. I was pointing out that this idea of "if they are trying to deny it then it must be true" is how normal people end up believing in all kind of conspiracy theories. The "AR-15 inside a pizza restaurant" is a reference to the popular incident at the height of the Pizzagate conspiracy [1]. No one in that incident was injured. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory#Criminal_responses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory#Cr...

rendall 4y ago

Defining terms is pretty essential. Blake Lemoine seems to be defining it in religious terms, and Gary Marcus seems to be responding to that. I suspect that sentience by any definition will always be irrelevant when it comes to AI. Humans desperately seek companionship, connection and community. When AI comes to be able to offer that to human beings, it won't be through a process that we would consider analogous to our own sentience (whatever that means) but that will be irrelevant: we will nevertheless be comforted. I do find it interesting that the arguments against LaMDA's sentience seem to amount to "it cannot be sentient because the process by which it arrives at its responses is understood and simple", which indicates that on some implicit, unspoken level sentience is defined for some people as there must be some mystery or unknown in order to be true sentience.

dr_dshiv 4y ago
> there must be some mystery or unknown Note that this also seems to be the case with artificial intelligence in general. It is the moving goalpost issue. “Oh, if I understand how the system works, then it can’t really be AI.” I’ve always thought that silly—but maybe it is because of the implicit expectation for sentience?
- rendall 4y ago
  IIRC, Ray Kurzweil predicted just this in his book "The Age of Spiritual Machines" - that we will have AI long before it's generally recognized, because humans will have a hard time conceptually accepting its existence. Given the outraged tone of the article, I can see that clearly.
  - bananaFace69 4y ago