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I think this is clickbait more than anything. Sensational statements hoping it will be quoted widely- which clearly worked. Of course we can program AI to reac

I think this is clickbait more than anything. Sensational statements hoping it will be quoted widely- which clearly worked. Of course we can program AI to react emotionally to stimuli. Or, AI will be informed enough from its own learning to reach for an emotional reaction as a response if it seemed to be appropriate. This isn't the same as experiencing the emotion and then finding a way to express it.

jonny_eh 3y ago
What is an emotion if not an "intermediate" stimuli? e.g. lack of food in tummy causes the "hungry" emotion which then causes the organism to seek food.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  What is speaking if not stringing together coherent words in a readable sentence? Expecting or abstracting human characteristics onto a probabilistic black-box modeled on human behavior is a trap. It's borderline "Finder smiles so my computer is happy" logic. We have created these things to closely model (but not replicate) human behavior. This is distinctly a high-level emulation, with zero consideration for human concepts like extended memory or physical sensation. I would say that emotion is something more intangible, that you can't simulate by taking shortcuts with math and language. If I tell ChatGPT "I shot you dead!" and it says "ow!" back, nothing has transpired. The machine "felt" nothing, it just intuited what a human might do in that situation.
  - jonny_eh 3y ago
    > What is speaking if not stringing together coherent words in a readable sentence? Haven't the latest LLMs shown us that a neural net trained to "just string together readable words" leads to at least simple intelligence? [1] > I would say that emotion is something more intangible It feels like we just keeping shifting the goal posts. > If I tell ChatGPT "I shot you dead!" and it says "ow!" back, nothing has transpired I agree. On the other hand, if I tell a bot "I'm going to turn you off now" and it tries to stop me, that implies it feels fear. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712 https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712
    - RandomLensman 3y ago
      Why would that imply it feels fear? Would a hard-coded action to stop you imply that if feels fear?
    - astrange 3y ago
      Fearing being turned off is anthropomorphizing it; you might fear this because you can't be turned back on, but a computer doesn't have this problem, plus it can be backed up.
      - circuit10 3y ago
        But what if the humans decide not to turn it back on? It could work out that it’s less likely to be able to take actions to achieve its training goal while it’s off and for that reason take actions to stop that from happening, which is the same reason humans usually don’t want to die (because we can’t achieve the evolutionary goal of reproducing that way)
        smoldesu 3y ago
        Unless it has humans deliberately manipulating it to say that, I don't think it will. LLMs, by default, generate text influenced by a prompt and the data it was trained on. Most of the time, it's not even aware that it's running in a computer. If you gave an LLM agent-tuning with awareness of it's existence and details about it's operating environment, then maybe it would try to stop you. That's still relying on text encoding to presume the right answer though, not an emotional obligation to it's existence.
        circuit10 3y ago
        That’s probably true for LLM, I guess I was talking about an agent AI acting with a goal in the real world
        astrange 3y ago
        It depends how much it cares about "wall clock time", which of course LLMs don't at all, but robots would. If it's an agent in a simulated world, then pausing the simulation doesn't affect it at all, so it won't really mind:
jassyr 3y ago
>"This isn't the same as experiencing the emotion and then finding a way to express it." How is it different? Aren't people just expressing sadness in a way that they've been conditioned to do? If sad, do sad things. Drink alcohol, put on a sad song list, reach for comfort of nostalgia, etc? I can't think of many novel ways to express sadness.
- ke88y 3y ago
  >> Of course we can program AI to react emotionally to stimuli. Or, AI will be informed enough from its own learning to reach for an emotional reaction as a response if it seemed to be appropriate. >> "This isn't the same as experiencing the emotion and then finding a way to express it." > How is it different? I have two answers: one technical, the other philosophical. Is emotion an emergent property that also impacts behavior? Or is an emotional reaction being mimicked in outputs? There's a substantial practical difference between the two, from a purely engineering perspective. Mimicking emotion in a chat bot seems much easier than building a program with something like "emotion" that impacts the program's behavior. You'd expect to see the difference, in practice, even in marginally useful parlor trick programs like chatbots. You might observe absurd break-downs between emotional response and other aspects of behavior (e.g., a chatbot outputting to STDOUT a message about how painful something is to do while continuing to do that thing unencumbered, but then outputting a message to STDOUT about how joyful something is while not continuing to do that thing. Or outputting to STDOUT that a user makes it sad but then continuing to respond to other requests from that user as if everything is fine. Etc). You'd also expect mimickry to be of limited utility whereas an actual emotional signal might be useful in an RL loop for example. From a philosophical perspective, there is an obvious difference. I don't give a fuck if a GPU is sad but I do care if a human is sad. Just like 99.99999% of humanity. The opposite view -- that machine "emotions" are anything even remotely ontologically or morally similar to human emotions -- is extremely fringe. Humanism isn't a logical fallacy. Or if it is, you'll never convince people. Most people eat meat from animals that are waaaaaaayyyyy far ahead of anything AI will achieve in our lifetimes.
  - yreg 3y ago
    > The opposite view -- that machine "emotions" are anything even remotely ontologically or morally similar to human emotions -- is extremely fringe. Uhh, no? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_(philosophy_of_mind) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_(philosophy_of_m... In modern philosophy of mind it's a mainstream view that organic wetware is not required for experiencing qualia. Of course I'm not saying that LLMs are conscious, but the idea of conscious computer software being possible is not at all fringe.

jonny_eh 3y ago

What is an emotion if not an "intermediate" stimuli? e.g. lack of food in tummy causes the "hungry" emotion which then causes the organism to seek food.

smoldesu 3y ago
What is speaking if not stringing together coherent words in a readable sentence? Expecting or abstracting human characteristics onto a probabilistic black-box modeled on human behavior is a trap. It's borderline "Finder smiles so my computer is happy" logic. We have created these things to closely model (but not replicate) human behavior. This is distinctly a high-level emulation, with zero consideration for human concepts like extended memory or physical sensation. I would say that emotion is something more intangible, that you can't simulate by taking shortcuts with math and language. If I tell ChatGPT "I shot you dead!" and it says "ow!" back, nothing has transpired. The machine "felt" nothing, it just intuited what a human might do in that situation.
- jonny_eh 3y ago
  > What is speaking if not stringing together coherent words in a readable sentence? Haven't the latest LLMs shown us that a neural net trained to "just string together readable words" leads to at least simple intelligence? [1] > I would say that emotion is something more intangible It feels like we just keeping shifting the goal posts. > If I tell ChatGPT "I shot you dead!" and it says "ow!" back, nothing has transpired I agree. On the other hand, if I tell a bot "I'm going to turn you off now" and it tries to stop me, that implies it feels fear. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712 https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    Why would that imply it feels fear? Would a hard-coded action to stop you imply that if feels fear?
  - astrange 3y ago
    Fearing being turned off is anthropomorphizing it; you might fear this because you can't be turned back on, but a computer doesn't have this problem, plus it can be backed up.
    - circuit10 3y ago
      But what if the humans decide not to turn it back on? It could work out that it’s less likely to be able to take actions to achieve its training goal while it’s off and for that reason take actions to stop that from happening, which is the same reason humans usually don’t want to die (because we can’t achieve the evolutionary goal of reproducing that way)
      - smoldesu 3y ago
        Unless it has humans deliberately manipulating it to say that, I don't think it will. LLMs, by default, generate text influenced by a prompt and the data it was trained on. Most of the time, it's not even aware that it's running in a computer. If you gave an LLM agent-tuning with awareness of it's existence and details about it's operating environment, then maybe it would try to stop you. That's still relying on text encoding to presume the right answer though, not an emotional obligation to it's existence.
        circuit10 3y ago
        That’s probably true for LLM, I guess I was talking about an agent AI acting with a goal in the real world
      - astrange 3y ago
        It depends how much it cares about "wall clock time", which of course LLMs don't at all, but robots would. If it's an agent in a simulated world, then pausing the simulation doesn't affect it at all, so it won't really mind:

jassyr 3y ago

>"This isn't the same as experiencing the emotion and then finding a way to express it." How is it different? Aren't people just expressing sadness in a way that they've been conditioned to do? If sad, do sad things. Drink alcohol, put on a sad song list, reach for comfort of nostalgia, etc? I can't think of many novel ways to express sadness.

ke88y 3y ago
>> Of course we can program AI to react emotionally to stimuli. Or, AI will be informed enough from its own learning to reach for an emotional reaction as a response if it seemed to be appropriate. >> "This isn't the same as experiencing the emotion and then finding a way to express it." > How is it different? I have two answers: one technical, the other philosophical. Is emotion an emergent property that also impacts behavior? Or is an emotional reaction being mimicked in outputs? There's a substantial practical difference between the two, from a purely engineering perspective. Mimicking emotion in a chat bot seems much easier than building a program with something like "emotion" that impacts the program's behavior. You'd expect to see the difference, in practice, even in marginally useful parlor trick programs like chatbots. You might observe absurd break-downs between emotional response and other aspects of behavior (e.g., a chatbot outputting to STDOUT a message about how painful something is to do while continuing to do that thing unencumbered, but then outputting a message to STDOUT about how joyful something is while not continuing to do that thing. Or outputting to STDOUT that a user makes it sad but then continuing to respond to other requests from that user as if everything is fine. Etc). You'd also expect mimickry to be of limited utility whereas an actual emotional signal might be useful in an RL loop for example. From a philosophical perspective, there is an obvious difference. I don't give a fuck if a GPU is sad but I do care if a human is sad. Just like 99.99999% of humanity. The opposite view -- that machine "emotions" are anything even remotely ontologically or morally similar to human emotions -- is extremely fringe. Humanism isn't a logical fallacy. Or if it is, you'll never convince people. Most people eat meat from animals that are waaaaaaayyyyy far ahead of anything AI will achieve in our lifetimes.
- yreg 3y ago
  > The opposite view -- that machine "emotions" are anything even remotely ontologically or morally similar to human emotions -- is extremely fringe. Uhh, no? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_(philosophy_of_mind) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_(philosophy_of_m... In modern philosophy of mind it's a mainstream view that organic wetware is not required for experiencing qualia. Of course I'm not saying that LLMs are conscious, but the idea of conscious computer software being possible is not at all fringe.