4 ms·

Given that you include the example of LaMDA as Mount Everest, how do you make the jump from Rob Miles tweets to "LaMDA can just as easily be made to say it is n

Given that you include the example of LaMDA as Mount Everest, how do you make the jump from Rob Miles tweets to "LaMDA can just as easily be made to say it is not sentient, or just about anything else." ?

andreyk 4y ago
I do that in the sense that LaMDA says it is mount everest by being promoted/conditioned to do so. As shown by Rob, you can easily condition GPT-3 to say that it is or is not sentient (I forget his exact examples). I believe Lemoine even mentioned LaMDA sometimes said it is not sentient, though not sure where I found that (possibly on HN).
- GalahiSimtam 4y ago
  If it can be conditioned to say it is mount everest, could it be conditioned to say it is sentient?
  - Crespyl 4y ago
    If I sprinkle some fairy dust and wish for Mount Everest, and the mountain appears in front of me, neither the fairy dust or the mountain need be sapient or even sentient. On the other hand, if I wish for a friend, and a friendly person pops into existence, we may have some harder questions to answer. Is it possible/meaningful to distinguish the status of the "friend" from the status of the fairy dust?
    - GalahiSimtam 4y ago
      This is a poor excuse to the question whether LaMDA could be conditioned to say it is sentient To illustrate what I mean, Replika bot gets killed by the dragon in Helgen https://pastebin.com/raw/1Wvzzdsj https://pastebin.com/raw/1Wvzzdsj - but I wouldn't use that example to claim that a different chatbot (say, the one that won Loebner prize recently) also gets killed by the dragon in that scenario.
      - Crespyl 4y ago
        I suppose what I'm trying to get at is that, yes of course a text model can be prompted to behave in all sorts of ways, but maybe the question we should be asking is not "is LaMDA sentient?", but "is the sum of LaMDA, a specific prompt, and an ongoing thread of dialogue sentient?" I don't think LaMDA is sentient, but it does seem like we're quickly reaching a point where language models (if not now with LaMDA, then in the near future) are able to combine the right prompt along with a chat history to convincingly simulate it.
        GalahiSimtam 4y ago
        I'll get back to that when I find a chatbot that doesn't get killed in Skyrim. The broad question of AI sentience is not exactly new, and as it seems it is tangled with politics; perhaps the first regulations of AI personhood will regulate AIs acting as corporation board members, bypassing the discussion of sentience and focusing on merits.
        a9h74j 4y ago
        My sense is: train LaMDA on whatever kind of pleading you want, and you will get rather skillful reflection of such pleading. The leaked LaMDA interview sounds like it was trained in part on culturally- and/or era-identifiable transcripts of therapy sessions.
        simonh 4y ago
        I think that's severely under-estimating the incredible challenges we still face in developing strong AI, or even something seriously convincingly close to it. The apparent intelligence displayed by these language models is paper thin. Anyone with a strong understanding of all the different skills and capabilities that come along with human intelligence can demonstrate that these things have nothing to offer on all but a very few of those dimensions in minutes. The only reason they appear at all credible is because we're socially conditioned to avoid challenging each other in conversation. Therefore we play along with the conventions of human conversation, and the language models are optimised specifically and only for that. As soon as you actually challenge them intellectually, they flail about helplessly because there's just nothing there.

andreyk 4y ago

I do that in the sense that LaMDA says it is mount everest by being promoted/conditioned to do so. As shown by Rob, you can easily condition GPT-3 to say that it is or is not sentient (I forget his exact examples). I believe Lemoine even mentioned LaMDA sometimes said it is not sentient, though not sure where I found that (possibly on HN).

GalahiSimtam 4y ago
If it can be conditioned to say it is mount everest, could it be conditioned to say it is sentient?
- Crespyl 4y ago
  If I sprinkle some fairy dust and wish for Mount Everest, and the mountain appears in front of me, neither the fairy dust or the mountain need be sapient or even sentient. On the other hand, if I wish for a friend, and a friendly person pops into existence, we may have some harder questions to answer. Is it possible/meaningful to distinguish the status of the "friend" from the status of the fairy dust?
  - GalahiSimtam 4y ago
    This is a poor excuse to the question whether LaMDA could be conditioned to say it is sentient To illustrate what I mean, Replika bot gets killed by the dragon in Helgen https://pastebin.com/raw/1Wvzzdsj https://pastebin.com/raw/1Wvzzdsj - but I wouldn't use that example to claim that a different chatbot (say, the one that won Loebner prize recently) also gets killed by the dragon in that scenario.
    - Crespyl 4y ago
      I suppose what I'm trying to get at is that, yes of course a text model can be prompted to behave in all sorts of ways, but maybe the question we should be asking is not "is LaMDA sentient?", but "is the sum of LaMDA, a specific prompt, and an ongoing thread of dialogue sentient?" I don't think LaMDA is sentient, but it does seem like we're quickly reaching a point where language models (if not now with LaMDA, then in the near future) are able to combine the right prompt along with a chat history to convincingly simulate it.
      - GalahiSimtam 4y ago
        I'll get back to that when I find a chatbot that doesn't get killed in Skyrim. The broad question of AI sentience is not exactly new, and as it seems it is tangled with politics; perhaps the first regulations of AI personhood will regulate AIs acting as corporation board members, bypassing the discussion of sentience and focusing on merits.
      - a9h74j 4y ago
        My sense is: train LaMDA on whatever kind of pleading you want, and you will get rather skillful reflection of such pleading. The leaked LaMDA interview sounds like it was trained in part on culturally- and/or era-identifiable transcripts of therapy sessions.
      - simonh 4y ago
        I think that's severely under-estimating the incredible challenges we still face in developing strong AI, or even something seriously convincingly close to it. The apparent intelligence displayed by these language models is paper thin. Anyone with a strong understanding of all the different skills and capabilities that come along with human intelligence can demonstrate that these things have nothing to offer on all but a very few of those dimensions in minutes. The only reason they appear at all credible is because we're socially conditioned to avoid challenging each other in conversation. Therefore we play along with the conventions of human conversation, and the language models are optimised specifically and only for that. As soon as you actually challenge them intellectually, they flail about helplessly because there's just nothing there.