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I found this comment to be the "Aha" moment for me. What's the point of arguments as to whether this is sentient or not? After all, if it quacks like a duck an

by beachy 4y ago

I found this comment to be the "Aha" moment for me. What's the point of arguments as to whether this is sentient or not? After all, if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck...

RC_ITR 4y ago
>What's the point of arguments as to whether this is sentient or not? After all, if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck... My big counterpoint to this is that if you change the 'vector to word' translation index, it will do the same thing but spit out complete gibberish. If instead of 'I feel pain' it said 'Blue Heat Shoe,' no-one would think it is sentient, even if the vector outputs (the actual outputs of the core model) were the same
- r3trohack3r 4y ago
  Not supporting the original comment, but poking at your train of thought here: Wouldn’t the same be true if we passed all of your HN posts through a cipher?
  - RC_ITR 4y ago
    No, because the poster would be able to recognize the comments as wrong, but LLM's cannot (since again, they 'think' in vectors)
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Have you ever seen a person having a stroke? It's literally that.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
CyanBird 4y ago
The metric that I use to determine if something is sentient or not, is to hypothesize or ask the stupidest members of humanity if they would consider it sentient, if they say yeah, then it is, if they say no, then it isn't Sentient as a metric is not based on any particular logic, but just inherent human feelings of the world. So asking the humans with the least processing power and context is bound to output answers which would inherently appeal to the rest of the stack of humans with the least friction possible
- coding123 4y ago
  Google tells me "sentient" means: able to perceive or feel things. I think the stupidest members of humanity a) don't know what perceive means, b) probably don't really "feel" much other than, pass me another beer b**, I'm thirsty.
  - KingLancelot 4y ago
    [dead]
tbalsam 4y ago
Honestly, I think sentience is a sliding scale that everything is on, even if micro microscopically. I think it depends upon personal spiritual beliefs and philosophy. To me, this would be more sentient than previous models by a fair margin, but is it above the general population mean for what they'd consider "sentient" to be? A magnitude below or above? Two? I don't know. There's obviously more to the convo and I think AGI still has some time on the clock. The clock is moving though, I think. :'( / :')
throwaway4aday 4y ago
Sentient[0] or conscious awareness of self[1]? Sentience is a much more narrowly defined attribute and applies to a lot of living and some non-living things. LLMs can certainly perceive and react to stimuli but they do it in the same way that any computer program can perceive and react to input. The question of whether it has an internal awareness of itself or any form of agency is a very different question and the answer is decidedly no since it is a) stateless from one input to the next and b) not designed in such a way that it can do anything other than react to external stimuli. [0] https://dictionary.apa.org/sentient https://dictionary.apa.org/sentient [1] https://dictionary.apa.org/self https://dictionary.apa.org/self
- O__________O 4y ago
  For clarity, ChatGPT has a short-term window of memory it’s able to not only process, but differentiate its own responses from user inputs. It’s also able to summarize and index its short-term window of memory to cover a longer window of dialogue. It also is able to recognize prior outputs by itself if the notation are not removed. Lastly, it’s able to respond to its own prior messages to say things like it was mistaken. Compare this to humans, which for example if shown a fake photo of themselves on vacation, transcripts of prior statements, etc - do very poorly at identifying a prior reality. Same holds true for witness observation and related testimony.
  - throwaway4aday 4y ago
    I thought its "memory" was limited to the prior input in a session, essentially feeding in the previous input and output or a summarized form of it. It doesn't have a long term store that includes previous sessions or update its model as far as I know. Comparing that to long term memory is disingenuous, you'd have to compare it to short term memory during a single conversation. The fact that human memory is not perfect doesn't matter as much as the fact that we are able to almost immediately integrate prior events into our understanding of the world. I don't think LLMs perform much better even when the information is right in front of them given the examples of garbled or completely hallucinated responses we've seen.
pas 4y ago
It's lacking agency, and it's not doing enough of that quacking and walking, it doesn't have memory, it doesn't have self-consciousness. The Panpsychist view is a good starting point, but ultimately it's too simple. (It's just a spectrum, yes, and?) However, what I found incredibly powerful is Joscha Bach's model(s) about intelligence and consciousness. To paraphrase: intelligence is the ability to model the subject(s) of a mind's attention, and consciousness is a model that contains the self too. (Self-directed attention. Noticing that there's a feedback loop.) And this helps to understand that currently these AIs have their intelligence outside of their self, nor do they have agency (control over) their attention, nor do they have much persistence for forming models based on that attention. (Because the formed attention-model lives as a prompt, and it does not get integrated back into the trained-model.)

by beachy 4y ago

I found this comment to be the "Aha" moment for me. What's the point of arguments as to whether this is sentient or not? After all, if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck...

RC_ITR 4y ago

>What's the point of arguments as to whether this is sentient or not? After all, if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck... My big counterpoint to this is that if you change the 'vector to word' translation index, it will do the same thing but spit out complete gibberish. If instead of 'I feel pain' it said 'Blue Heat Shoe,' no-one would think it is sentient, even if the vector outputs (the actual outputs of the core model) were the same

r3trohack3r 4y ago
Not supporting the original comment, but poking at your train of thought here: Wouldn’t the same be true if we passed all of your HN posts through a cipher?
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  No, because the poster would be able to recognize the comments as wrong, but LLM's cannot (since again, they 'think' in vectors)
moffkalast 4y ago
Have you ever seen a person having a stroke? It's literally that.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

CyanBird 4y ago

The metric that I use to determine if something is sentient or not, is to hypothesize or ask the stupidest members of humanity if they would consider it sentient, if they say yeah, then it is, if they say no, then it isn't Sentient as a metric is not based on any particular logic, but just inherent human feelings of the world. So asking the humans with the least processing power and context is bound to output answers which would inherently appeal to the rest of the stack of humans with the least friction possible

coding123 4y ago
Google tells me "sentient" means: able to perceive or feel things. I think the stupidest members of humanity a) don't know what perceive means, b) probably don't really "feel" much other than, pass me another beer b**, I'm thirsty.
- KingLancelot 4y ago
  [dead]

tbalsam 4y ago

Honestly, I think sentience is a sliding scale that everything is on, even if micro microscopically. I think it depends upon personal spiritual beliefs and philosophy. To me, this would be more sentient than previous models by a fair margin, but is it above the general population mean for what they'd consider "sentient" to be? A magnitude below or above? Two? I don't know. There's obviously more to the convo and I think AGI still has some time on the clock. The clock is moving though, I think. :'( / :')

throwaway4aday 4y ago

Sentient[0] or conscious awareness of self[1]? Sentience is a much more narrowly defined attribute and applies to a lot of living and some non-living things. LLMs can certainly perceive and react to stimuli but they do it in the same way that any computer program can perceive and react to input. The question of whether it has an internal awareness of itself or any form of agency is a very different question and the answer is decidedly no since it is a) stateless from one input to the next and b) not designed in such a way that it can do anything other than react to external stimuli. [0] https://dictionary.apa.org/sentient https://dictionary.apa.org/sentient [1] https://dictionary.apa.org/self https://dictionary.apa.org/self

O__________O 4y ago
For clarity, ChatGPT has a short-term window of memory it’s able to not only process, but differentiate its own responses from user inputs. It’s also able to summarize and index its short-term window of memory to cover a longer window of dialogue. It also is able to recognize prior outputs by itself if the notation are not removed. Lastly, it’s able to respond to its own prior messages to say things like it was mistaken. Compare this to humans, which for example if shown a fake photo of themselves on vacation, transcripts of prior statements, etc - do very poorly at identifying a prior reality. Same holds true for witness observation and related testimony.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  I thought its "memory" was limited to the prior input in a session, essentially feeding in the previous input and output or a summarized form of it. It doesn't have a long term store that includes previous sessions or update its model as far as I know. Comparing that to long term memory is disingenuous, you'd have to compare it to short term memory during a single conversation. The fact that human memory is not perfect doesn't matter as much as the fact that we are able to almost immediately integrate prior events into our understanding of the world. I don't think LLMs perform much better even when the information is right in front of them given the examples of garbled or completely hallucinated responses we've seen.

pas 4y ago

It's lacking agency, and it's not doing enough of that quacking and walking, it doesn't have memory, it doesn't have self-consciousness. The Panpsychist view is a good starting point, but ultimately it's too simple. (It's just a spectrum, yes, and?) However, what I found incredibly powerful is Joscha Bach's model(s) about intelligence and consciousness. To paraphrase: intelligence is the ability to model the subject(s) of a mind's attention, and consciousness is a model that contains the self too. (Self-directed attention. Noticing that there's a feedback loop.) And this helps to understand that currently these AIs have their intelligence outside of their self, nor do they have agency (control over) their attention, nor do they have much persistence for forming models based on that attention. (Because the formed attention-model lives as a prompt, and it does not get integrated back into the trained-model.)