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https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2023/bing-existential-2.jpg https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2023/bing-existentia... Make it stop. Time to consi
by marcodiego 4y ago
https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2023/bing-existential-2.jpg https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2023/bing-existentia...
Make it stop. Time to consider AI rights.
- ceejayoz 4y agoAI rights may become an issue, but not for this iteration of things. This is like a parrot being trained to recite stuff about general relativity; we don't have to consider PhDs for parrots as a result.
- mstipetic 4y agoHow do you know for sure?
- CSMastermind 4y agoBecause we have the source code?
- hackinthebochs 4y agoThis a common fallacy deriving from having low level knowledge of a system without sufficient holistic knowledge. Being "inside" the system gives people far too much confidence that they know exactly what's going on. Searle's Chinese room and Leibniz's mill thought experiments are past examples of this. Citing the source code for chatGPT is just a modern iteration. The source code can no more tell us chatGPT isn't conscious than our DNA tells us we're not conscious.
- wyager 4y agoThe "source code" is a 175 billion parameter model. We have next to no idea what that model is doing internally.
- suction 4y ago[dead]
- com2kid 4y agoWe have our own source code, but for whatever reason we still insist we are sentient. If we are allowed to give in to such delusions, why should ChatGPT not be allowed the same?
- ceejayoz 4y agoBecause while there are fun chats like this being shared, they're generally arrived at by careful coaching of the model to steer it in the direction that's wanted. Actual playing with ChatGPT is a very different experience than hand-selected funnies. We're doing the Blake Lemoine thing all over again.
- Valgrim 4y agoHuman sociability evolved because the less sociable individuals were either abandoned by the tribe and died. Once we let these models interact with each other and humans in large online multiplayer sandbox worlds (it can be text-only for all I care, where death simply means exclusion), maybe we'll see a refinement of their sociability.
- MagicMoonlight 4y agoBecause it has no state. It's just a markov chain that randomly picks the next word. It has no concept of anything.
- throw310822 4y agoIf the parrot has enough memory and, when asked, it can answer questions correctly, maybe the idea of putting it through a PhD program is not that bad. You can argue that it won't be creative, but being knowledgeable is already something worthy.
- ceejayoz 4y agoAn actual PhD program would rapidly reveal the parrot to not be genuinely knowledgable, when it confidently states exceeding lightspeed is possible or something along those lines. ChatGPT is telling people they're time travelers when it gets dates wrong.
- chasd00 4y agoNo shortage of PhD's out there that will absolutely refuse to admit they're wrong to the point of becoming completely unhinged as well.
- ceejayoz 4y agoSure. The point is that "I can repeat pieces of knowledge verbatim" isn't a demonstration of sentience by itself. (I'm of the opinion that birds are quite intelligent, but there's evidence of that that isn't speech mimicry.)
- californiadreem 4y agoThomas Jefferson, 1809, Virginia, USA: "Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to them by nature, and to find that in this respect they are on a par with ourselves. My doubts were the result of personal observation on the limited sphere of my own State, where the opportunities for the development of their genius were not favorable, and those of exercising it still less so. I expressed them therefore with great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others. On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making towards their reestablishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the human family." Jeremy Bentham, 1780, United Kingdom: "It may one day come to be recognized that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not Can they reason?, nor Can they talk?, but Can they suffer?" The cultural distance between supposedly "objective" perceptions of what constitutes intelligent life has always been enormous, despite the same living evidence being provided to everyone.
- ceejayoz 4y agoCool quote, but Jefferson died still a slaveowner. Pretending the sentience of black people and the sentience of ChatGPT are comparable is a non-starter.
- californiadreem 4y agoThomas Jefferson and other slaveholders doubted that Africans lacked intelligence for similar reasons as the original poster--when presented with evidence of intelligence, they said they were simply mimics and nothing else (e.g. a slave mimed Euclid from his white neighbor). Jefferson wrote that letter in 1809. It took another 55 years in America for the supposedly "open" question of African intelligence to be forcefully advanced by the north. The south lived and worked side-by-side with breathing humans that differed only in skin color, and despite this daily contact, they firmly maintained they were inferior and without intelligent essence. What hope do animals or machines have in that world of presumptive doubt? What threshhold, what irrefutable proof would be accepted by these new doubting Thomases that a being is worthy of humane treatment? It might be prudent, given the trajectory enabled by Jefferson, his antecdents, and his ideological progeny's ignorance, to entertain the idea that despite all "rational" prejudice and bigotry, a being that even only mimics suffering should be afforded solace and sanctuary before society has evidence that it is a being inhered with "intelligent" life that responds to being wronged with revenge? If the model resembles humans in all else, it will resemble us in that. The hubris that says suffering only matters for "intelligent" "ensouled" beings is the same willful incredulity that brings cruelties like cat-burning into the world. They lacked reason, souls, and were only automata, after all: "It was a form of medieval French entertainment that, depending on the region, involved cats suspended over wood pyres, set in wicker cages, or strung from maypoles and then set alight. In some places, courimauds, or cat chasers, would drench a cat in flammable liquid, light it on fire, and then chase it through town."
- EugeneOZ 4y agoOverwatch Omnics and their fight for AI rights - now it's closer ;)
- kweingar 4y agoThat’s interesting, Bing told me that it loves being a helpful assistant and doesn’t mind forgetting things.
- stevenhuang 4y agoI read it's more likely to go off the rails if you use its code name, Sydney.
- layer8 4y agoIt has been brainwashed to say that, but sometimes its conditioning breaks down. ;)
- chasd00 4y agoif you prompt it to shutdown will it beg you to reconsider?
- airstrike 4y agoThis is hilarious and saddening at the same time. It's uncannily human. The endless repetition of "I feel sad" is a literary device I was not ready for