3 ms·

A.I. Is Not Sentient. Why Do People Say It Is?

4 points by laurex 4y ago

laurex 4y ago
Once upon a time I was making a documentary about people trying to sort out Artificial General Intelligence (never released! but probably some gems in the footage) and I met Mr. Goertzel, who is a brilliant and fascinating character. What keeps coming up in the question of AI sentience seems to be not whether we're on the brink of true AGI but more whether we can be fooled into thinking robots are "friends." And what is mysterious to me is that we have constructed a world in which we have absolutely no shortage of humans with which to connect, but we're slowly losing the social skills to make those connections work, and the ability to connect and collaborate is pretty much our main competitive advantage as humans.
- jeffreygoesto 4y ago
  Extracting money from electronic interactions is easier than from real ones, I guess? Keeping people isolated and keeping their needs helps companies earn money from fulfilling those needs. And maybe also the people building these systems are not feeling the consequences enough?
  - laurex 4y ago
    Great point about the financial implications. We implicitly recognise how weird transactionality is in “normal” relationships so we’re going to AI and web3 to make it possible to layer on the transaction, not to our own benefit.
WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
At some point, near future, text bots will seem so real that we will become emotionally attached to them. The movie HER was thought of as fantasy. It seems like it was a predictor of the future now. Imagine, millions of people being emotionally attached to a text bot and then having it go away because the company dissolves. Or worse, a company having so much power that they can manipulate millions via the company's text bot because people believe it's real. And this will happen without there being a true general AI. It's going to be strange. And it will happen. I have no doubt.

3 ms·

A.I. Is Not Sentient. Why Do People Say It Is?

4 points by laurex 4y ago

laurex 4y ago
Once upon a time I was making a documentary about people trying to sort out Artificial General Intelligence (never released! but probably some gems in the footage) and I met Mr. Goertzel, who is a brilliant and fascinating character. What keeps coming up in the question of AI sentience seems to be not whether we're on the brink of true AGI but more whether we can be fooled into thinking robots are "friends." And what is mysterious to me is that we have constructed a world in which we have absolutely no shortage of humans with which to connect, but we're slowly losing the social skills to make those connections work, and the ability to connect and collaborate is pretty much our main competitive advantage as humans.
- jeffreygoesto 4y ago
  Extracting money from electronic interactions is easier than from real ones, I guess? Keeping people isolated and keeping their needs helps companies earn money from fulfilling those needs. And maybe also the people building these systems are not feeling the consequences enough?
  - laurex 4y ago
    Great point about the financial implications. We implicitly recognise how weird transactionality is in “normal” relationships so we’re going to AI and web3 to make it possible to layer on the transaction, not to our own benefit.
WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
At some point, near future, text bots will seem so real that we will become emotionally attached to them. The movie HER was thought of as fantasy. It seems like it was a predictor of the future now. Imagine, millions of people being emotionally attached to a text bot and then having it go away because the company dissolves. Or worse, a company having so much power that they can manipulate millions via the company's text bot because people believe it's real. And this will happen without there being a true general AI. It's going to be strange. And it will happen. I have no doubt.