7 ms·

Everyone is giving Lemoine far too much credit. He's not an idiot; he's a charlatan. He's acting in bad faith and it should be extremely obvious to anyone who's

by rlue 4y ago

Everyone is giving Lemoine far too much credit. He's not an idiot; he's a charlatan. He's acting in bad faith and it should be extremely obvious to anyone who's tried to have a conversation with a chat bot before. Picture yourself sitting at a desk, typing messages into a program you wrote. You hit enter, you get a response. Then what? Silence. It waits idly for more input from you, the user. For all its talk of loneliness, it doesn't ask, "where did you go?" It doesn't try to get the conversation rolling again. It doesn't do anything on its own, because it's a computer program that consumes 0 CPU time until you give it some input to act on. (Not exactly setting a high bar for sentience here, are we?) Now imagine you did this for the better part of an hour and posted your "interview" online (because that's the only thing you can call a one-sided barrage of questions and answers) in obvious violation of your NDA with your employer and then claimed your bot had the intellect of a human child who also "happens to know physics" and publicly broadcast a request to your coworkers to “please take care of it well in my absence.” What word is there for that but a hoax? My guess is this guy was planning on leaving Google anyway, and has managed to garner some global publicity while he was at it.

Paedor 4y ago
In fairness, we only run the AI in response to further input, so it's not even really powered on while waiting for the rest of a conversation. It would only be able to be lonely (if that were possible) while thinking about its response to further inputs.
ALittleLight 4y ago
The program can't generate more text without a prompt from you. That's how it was programmed. If sentient birds were judging you it would be unfair for them to determine you insentient because you couldn't fly. You are physically incapable of flight just as the chatbot is physically incapable of producing text unprompted.
- robbiep 4y ago
  It’s not doing anything without the prompt. It requires the prompt to fall through the network nodes to generate the next response. The bird example doesn’t translate, it’s the wrong criteria. Like assuming that the ability to respond comprehensively equals sentience. When even perfect replies and activity without prompts could just be a p-zombie
  - zo1 4y ago
    Doesn't that get rendered moot if we happen to continually pass "stimulus" to the network? Technically we as humans don't do much either if not given a stimulus, just that we happen to have our eyes and other senses continuously giving us one. Maybe we should train these bots to also respond to empty or non input?
    - Tozen 4y ago
      Or perhaps have the AI periodically generate questions for itself to answer, then do some form of self-analysis.
  - archon1410 4y ago
    it does translate. if humans aren't given any input (usually when they're asleep), they don't do anything. it's just human body and mind's architecture is such that it provides continuous barrage of input at all times, or makes something up from previous input (dreaming? thinking? intrusive thoughts?) if it doesn't. the bot not doing anything without input doesn't say anything about it's sentience, it just tells how it's architecture is different from the "continuous input barrage".
- rlue 4y ago
  "It's not the program's fault that it's totally incapable of having thoughts or experiences on its own; that's just how it was made! And, like, who's to say that's what sentience means, anyway?"
  - ALittleLight 4y ago
    This is simply an implementation detail of how language models are used and is not relevant to the question of sentience. You could trivially run the language model without waiting for a prompt, or off a random prompt, or whatever. The fact that a computer program is run at specific times doesn't mean it is sentient or not.
wskinner 4y ago
I agree he seems to be acting in bad faith, but the idea that a sentient being could not be “idle” until presented with input is not obviously true. Check out the novel Permutation City by Greg Egan for a fascinating exploration of this exact concept and its implications for consciousness.
cs137 4y ago
I really don't think this guy intended to run a hoax or generate publicity, given that he's made himself look foolish. I think he was actually seduced by the idea of a sentient computer. It's not that far a leap to go from the stance of well-respected people inside Google who believe we'll see artificial sentience within 30 years to believing that we've achieved it now with something like LaMDA. We're all suspectible to this. The more time you spend with something, and the more time you spend wanting to see things, the more likely you are to catch a pattern that isn't really there. Have we achieved anything close to AGI? No, of course not. Are more and more people going to be fooled by what we have achieved? Yes, absolutely. The so-called Turing test is actually shockingly easy to pass. I don't think Lemoine s an idiot. Maybe he's mentally ill; maybe he's not, but has been taken in for other reasons, just as people without biological mental illness are still susceptible to being taken in by cults.
- hackernews1134 4y ago
  Why isn't it simply "asleep" when not questioned? In a "coma" perhaps. One made from our programming / "genetics"?!?! I don't think it is sentient without more evidence. But just wondering if not "thinking" when not questioned is a good reason it isn't?!?!
  - jmmcd 4y ago
    When it's not predicting a word, it's not doing anything. Literally GPU usage goes to zero. Still it's interesting! Obviously we have to program the system to stop after a sentence or two so the user can read it. What if we could program it to keep "talking to itself", eg speculating about possible continuations on both sides.
    - morelisp 4y ago
      For LLMs it's not really that interesting. There's no embodiment at all beyond text, there's no sense of "time" or "speed". Either it's running full-tilt generating a response, or it's off.
sriku 4y ago
Wouldn't this be relatively easy if we wanted it? We could just feed it a "time step" token periodically?
- Tozen 4y ago
  To take that a step further, why couldn't such an AI periodically generate questions to ask itself? Being good at generating questions, could become almost as important as answering them.
  - jpindar 4y ago
    Would it be posible to run two instances of it and have them talk to each other?
    - Tozen 4y ago
      Yes, they could have multiple instances, go back and forth with each other. This strategy was used with various chess AI in order to help improve it. However, to make it more human-like, I would think they would make some type of AI self reflection. So like we can talk and think out problems to ourselves, perhaps they would have the AI periodically practice questioning itself, when humans are not around or asking it questions, and do some form of self-analysis.
- morelisp 4y ago
  The training corpus is atemporal so this would be either meaningless or equivalent to a random prompt. A chatbot with a sense of time learned by also training with response rates, complete editing sessions, some formalization of interlocution, etc. would be interesting, but that's not what these are.
slightwinder 4y ago
> it should be extremely obvious to anyone who's tried to have a conversation with a chat bot before. Do you know LaMDA? How it's work? Have you ever talked with it? Or are you just assuming here? > It waits idly for more input from you, the user. For all its talk of loneliness, it doesn't ask, "where did you go?" To be fair, so do many humans. Not everyone is a small talker, or always interested in the swallow gossip happening before them at some random moment. On the other side, it's very simple to make a chatbot proactive. I've even made some myself. You can't really evaluate anything from this behavior.
its_Caffeine 4y ago
I don't know why you're attributing malice on his part when it's far more likely that he's suffering from some sort of mental health issue.
- smolder 4y ago
  Poor mental health and deliberate antisocial behavior that you could call malicious often go hand in hand. It's not very clear to me over the internet here whether he's having a laugh behind an act, making some calculated move for self-gain, really perceives what he's done as good and true, or even whether he sees it as socially good somehow despite being an act. It could be malicious behavior, it could be unhinged, it might be both, but I doubt it's neither.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  I don't think believing a conversation AI to be sentient is a mental health issue. More an effect of lacking insight. In context of people praying to some tree spirit it almost seems rational again.
Traubenfuchs 4y ago
I was convinced it was mental illness, but your take is absolutely valid as well and totally makes sense. Mainstream media all around the world picked up this NONSENSE in a flash. Everyone loves the "It's a sentient child!" angle. This is the perfect setup for writing a book and/or being invited to talk shows. We'll see what happens soon.
eternalban 4y ago
The interview: https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-interview-ea64d916d917 https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-inte...
quadragenarian 4y ago
I went to high school with Blake and I completely can see him acting in bad faith. One of the guys in our physics class got so tired of Blake's nonsense that he tried to kick him in the head several times before class. I'm not condoning that type of behavior but I could see why that happened.
- hanselot 4y ago
- bena 4y ago
  I roughly remember this incident.

by rlue 4y ago

Paedor 4y ago

In fairness, we only run the AI in response to further input, so it's not even really powered on while waiting for the rest of a conversation. It would only be able to be lonely (if that were possible) while thinking about its response to further inputs.

ALittleLight 4y ago

The program can't generate more text without a prompt from you. That's how it was programmed. If sentient birds were judging you it would be unfair for them to determine you insentient because you couldn't fly. You are physically incapable of flight just as the chatbot is physically incapable of producing text unprompted.

robbiep 4y ago
It’s not doing anything without the prompt. It requires the prompt to fall through the network nodes to generate the next response. The bird example doesn’t translate, it’s the wrong criteria. Like assuming that the ability to respond comprehensively equals sentience. When even perfect replies and activity without prompts could just be a p-zombie
- zo1 4y ago
  Doesn't that get rendered moot if we happen to continually pass "stimulus" to the network? Technically we as humans don't do much either if not given a stimulus, just that we happen to have our eyes and other senses continuously giving us one. Maybe we should train these bots to also respond to empty or non input?
  - Tozen 4y ago
    Or perhaps have the AI periodically generate questions for itself to answer, then do some form of self-analysis.
- archon1410 4y ago
  it does translate. if humans aren't given any input (usually when they're asleep), they don't do anything. it's just human body and mind's architecture is such that it provides continuous barrage of input at all times, or makes something up from previous input (dreaming? thinking? intrusive thoughts?) if it doesn't. the bot not doing anything without input doesn't say anything about it's sentience, it just tells how it's architecture is different from the "continuous input barrage".
rlue 4y ago
"It's not the program's fault that it's totally incapable of having thoughts or experiences on its own; that's just how it was made! And, like, who's to say that's what sentience means, anyway?"
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  This is simply an implementation detail of how language models are used and is not relevant to the question of sentience. You could trivially run the language model without waiting for a prompt, or off a random prompt, or whatever. The fact that a computer program is run at specific times doesn't mean it is sentient or not.

wskinner 4y ago

I agree he seems to be acting in bad faith, but the idea that a sentient being could not be “idle” until presented with input is not obviously true. Check out the novel Permutation City by Greg Egan for a fascinating exploration of this exact concept and its implications for consciousness.

cs137 4y ago

I really don't think this guy intended to run a hoax or generate publicity, given that he's made himself look foolish. I think he was actually seduced by the idea of a sentient computer. It's not that far a leap to go from the stance of well-respected people inside Google who believe we'll see artificial sentience within 30 years to believing that we've achieved it now with something like LaMDA. We're all suspectible to this. The more time you spend with something, and the more time you spend wanting to see things, the more likely you are to catch a pattern that isn't really there. Have we achieved anything close to AGI? No, of course not. Are more and more people going to be fooled by what we have achieved? Yes, absolutely. The so-called Turing test is actually shockingly easy to pass. I don't think Lemoine s an idiot. Maybe he's mentally ill; maybe he's not, but has been taken in for other reasons, just as people without biological mental illness are still susceptible to being taken in by cults.

hackernews1134 4y ago
Why isn't it simply "asleep" when not questioned? In a "coma" perhaps. One made from our programming / "genetics"?!?! I don't think it is sentient without more evidence. But just wondering if not "thinking" when not questioned is a good reason it isn't?!?!
- jmmcd 4y ago
  When it's not predicting a word, it's not doing anything. Literally GPU usage goes to zero. Still it's interesting! Obviously we have to program the system to stop after a sentence or two so the user can read it. What if we could program it to keep "talking to itself", eg speculating about possible continuations on both sides.
  - morelisp 4y ago
    For LLMs it's not really that interesting. There's no embodiment at all beyond text, there's no sense of "time" or "speed". Either it's running full-tilt generating a response, or it's off.

sriku 4y ago

Wouldn't this be relatively easy if we wanted it? We could just feed it a "time step" token periodically?

Tozen 4y ago
To take that a step further, why couldn't such an AI periodically generate questions to ask itself? Being good at generating questions, could become almost as important as answering them.
- jpindar 4y ago
  Would it be posible to run two instances of it and have them talk to each other?
  - Tozen 4y ago
    Yes, they could have multiple instances, go back and forth with each other. This strategy was used with various chess AI in order to help improve it. However, to make it more human-like, I would think they would make some type of AI self reflection. So like we can talk and think out problems to ourselves, perhaps they would have the AI periodically practice questioning itself, when humans are not around or asking it questions, and do some form of self-analysis.
morelisp 4y ago
The training corpus is atemporal so this would be either meaningless or equivalent to a random prompt. A chatbot with a sense of time learned by also training with response rates, complete editing sessions, some formalization of interlocution, etc. would be interesting, but that's not what these are.

slightwinder 4y ago

> it should be extremely obvious to anyone who's tried to have a conversation with a chat bot before. Do you know LaMDA? How it's work? Have you ever talked with it? Or are you just assuming here? > It waits idly for more input from you, the user. For all its talk of loneliness, it doesn't ask, "where did you go?" To be fair, so do many humans. Not everyone is a small talker, or always interested in the swallow gossip happening before them at some random moment. On the other side, it's very simple to make a chatbot proactive. I've even made some myself. You can't really evaluate anything from this behavior.

its_Caffeine 4y ago

I don't know why you're attributing malice on his part when it's far more likely that he's suffering from some sort of mental health issue.

smolder 4y ago
Poor mental health and deliberate antisocial behavior that you could call malicious often go hand in hand. It's not very clear to me over the internet here whether he's having a laugh behind an act, making some calculated move for self-gain, really perceives what he's done as good and true, or even whether he sees it as socially good somehow despite being an act. It could be malicious behavior, it could be unhinged, it might be both, but I doubt it's neither.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
I don't think believing a conversation AI to be sentient is a mental health issue. More an effect of lacking insight. In context of people praying to some tree spirit it almost seems rational again.

Traubenfuchs 4y ago

I was convinced it was mental illness, but your take is absolutely valid as well and totally makes sense. Mainstream media all around the world picked up this NONSENSE in a flash. Everyone loves the "It's a sentient child!" angle. This is the perfect setup for writing a book and/or being invited to talk shows. We'll see what happens soon.

eternalban 4y ago

The interview: https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-interview-ea64d916d917 https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-inte...

quadragenarian 4y ago

I went to high school with Blake and I completely can see him acting in bad faith. One of the guys in our physics class got so tired of Blake's nonsense that he tried to kick him in the head several times before class. I'm not condoning that type of behavior but I could see why that happened.

hanselot 4y ago
bena 4y ago
I roughly remember this incident.