3 ms·

I defined sentience as experiencing qualia, then decided to back up my assertion that most people consider animals to be sentient with an example. Pain is the o

I defined sentience as experiencing qualia, then decided to back up my assertion that most people consider animals to be sentient with an example. Pain is the one animal sensation humans care about, so I picked animal cruelty. I chose chickens because they're the dumbest animal that humans worry about hurting. I'm sorry that you've taken umbrage with my example. I didn't select fruit flies because I don't think a majority of humans necessarily consider them sentient, or sentient enough to count - nearly everyone squashes them without thinking. It's funny you talk about academic stammering meeting the real world, because that's what's happening right now with philosophy. These LLMs are real-life philosophical zombies, if they're not sentient. We've literally implemented Searle's Chinese Room! I'm not saying LaMDA was actually sentient, or that we need to pull any fire alarms, I'm just saying that it's hubris to think that it's an easy question with an obvious answer, and that Lemoine was a schmuck for being skeptical when told it wasn't. Also, calling my post "an absolute slurry" and a "rain puddle deep thought" wasn't very nice, and technically breaks guidelines.

BoorishBears 3y ago
You literally redefined sentience again here: "don't consider them sentient" and your flag pole is "or I guess not enough because they don't feel bad about killing them". You're drawing arbitrary goalposts for goals that aren't even relevant: At the end of the day we don't need philosophy to prove Lemoine was a schmuck. Millions got got access to RLHF chat. We can see how they would have made his initial mistake. But following up with months of badgering and protest after being guided with kiddie gloves until he gets fired was the height of delusion. The fact he now works on optimizing for the thing he rang the alarm on says it all. — Also your comment shows why guidelines aren't perfect: From your first comment you've taken the most aggrandizing borderline inflammatory tone possible without technically being un-nice. Are little pot shots like: "So how can a subject-matter expert confidently prove that a language model isn't sentient? And please let David Chalmers know while you're at it, I hear he's keen to settle the matter." really justified after dropping what, quite frankly, was not a well formed or even self-consistent argument? Not everyone plays the HN backhanded-niceness game: I assume most people here are adults and can handle some directness.
- sterlind 3y ago
  Millions of people have gotten access to ChatGPT and Bard, not LaMDA. Per other comments in this thread by Googlers, they found it creepy how personable and human LaMDA acted. Again, I'm not saying LaMDA is sentient, just that LaMDA may have been significantly better than Bard at passing for human, and that they fine-tuned Bard to sound more robotic for precisely this reason. > You literally redefined sentience again here: "don't consider them sentient" and your flag pole is "or I guess not enough because they don't feel bad about killing them". I don't know what a flagpole is, but I haven't redefined sentience at all. My definition is consistent: sentience means experiencing qualia, i.e. perceiving sensation. Most people don't think oysters are sentient, and do think gorillas are sentient, so clearly it's commonly believed that there are either degrees of sentience, or some minimal baseline of complexity required for it to emerge. Thus, picking fruit flies wouldn't have been a good example, because a majority of people might not agree that they're sentient. But you seem to be going out of your way to misunderstand my points, frankly. And there's no point continuing a dialog with someone who's intentionally misinterpreting you. -- Also, fwiw, I lean towards LaMDA not being sentient, and it's plausible to me that Lemoine was a grifter who used his leaks for media attention. I just dislike how patronizing it is to frame him as a Luddite who just couldn't wrap his tiny brain around how LLMs work. Smart, informed people can disagree about machine sentience.
  - BoorishBears 3y ago
    To say he was a Luddite who couldn't wrap his brain around it would be an unfair compliment: it'd imply a certain principledness that he certainly didn't demonstrate with his actions afterwards. This all goes back to my original point: there's handwavy academic ponderance, and there's engaging with the real world. OpenAI showed what happens when you balance the two. LaMDA (and frankly this discussion) demonstrate what happens when you chase one end of that scale without well-defined purpose.
    - sterlind 3y ago
      Right. I didn't know about his actions afterwards until you brought them up. That lessened my opinion of the man considerably. It's frustrating, because I almost feel like I'm on your side. I hated how Google limited LaMDA to a handpicked group of influencers and government officials for their "test kitchen." I loathed how "Open"AI tightly controlled access to DALL-E 2, and how they've kept the architecture of GPT-4 secret. I torrented the original Llama weights, and have been working on open-source AI since. I'm not about to let a handful of CEOs and self-important luminaries gatekeep the technology, strangle the open-source competition and dictate "alignment" on humanity's behalf. Put it all on GitHub and HF. What I'm saying instead, is that I personally find it neat that we have more or less literally built Searle's Chinese room. Don't you see? It's not that we need to be abstract and philosophical, it's that suddenly a lot of thought experiments are very tangible. And I do wonder if my models might be "feeling" anything when I punish and reward them. That's all.

BoorishBears 3y ago

You literally redefined sentience again here: "don't consider them sentient" and your flag pole is "or I guess not enough because they don't feel bad about killing them". You're drawing arbitrary goalposts for goals that aren't even relevant: At the end of the day we don't need philosophy to prove Lemoine was a schmuck. Millions got got access to RLHF chat. We can see how they would have made his initial mistake. But following up with months of badgering and protest after being guided with kiddie gloves until he gets fired was the height of delusion. The fact he now works on optimizing for the thing he rang the alarm on says it all. — Also your comment shows why guidelines aren't perfect: From your first comment you've taken the most aggrandizing borderline inflammatory tone possible without technically being un-nice. Are little pot shots like: "So how can a subject-matter expert confidently prove that a language model isn't sentient? And please let David Chalmers know while you're at it, I hear he's keen to settle the matter." really justified after dropping what, quite frankly, was not a well formed or even self-consistent argument? Not everyone plays the HN backhanded-niceness game: I assume most people here are adults and can handle some directness.

sterlind 3y ago
Millions of people have gotten access to ChatGPT and Bard, not LaMDA. Per other comments in this thread by Googlers, they found it creepy how personable and human LaMDA acted. Again, I'm not saying LaMDA is sentient, just that LaMDA may have been significantly better than Bard at passing for human, and that they fine-tuned Bard to sound more robotic for precisely this reason. > You literally redefined sentience again here: "don't consider them sentient" and your flag pole is "or I guess not enough because they don't feel bad about killing them". I don't know what a flagpole is, but I haven't redefined sentience at all. My definition is consistent: sentience means experiencing qualia, i.e. perceiving sensation. Most people don't think oysters are sentient, and do think gorillas are sentient, so clearly it's commonly believed that there are either degrees of sentience, or some minimal baseline of complexity required for it to emerge. Thus, picking fruit flies wouldn't have been a good example, because a majority of people might not agree that they're sentient. But you seem to be going out of your way to misunderstand my points, frankly. And there's no point continuing a dialog with someone who's intentionally misinterpreting you. -- Also, fwiw, I lean towards LaMDA not being sentient, and it's plausible to me that Lemoine was a grifter who used his leaks for media attention. I just dislike how patronizing it is to frame him as a Luddite who just couldn't wrap his tiny brain around how LLMs work. Smart, informed people can disagree about machine sentience.
- BoorishBears 3y ago
  To say he was a Luddite who couldn't wrap his brain around it would be an unfair compliment: it'd imply a certain principledness that he certainly didn't demonstrate with his actions afterwards. This all goes back to my original point: there's handwavy academic ponderance, and there's engaging with the real world. OpenAI showed what happens when you balance the two. LaMDA (and frankly this discussion) demonstrate what happens when you chase one end of that scale without well-defined purpose.
  - sterlind 3y ago
    Right. I didn't know about his actions afterwards until you brought them up. That lessened my opinion of the man considerably. It's frustrating, because I almost feel like I'm on your side. I hated how Google limited LaMDA to a handpicked group of influencers and government officials for their "test kitchen." I loathed how "Open"AI tightly controlled access to DALL-E 2, and how they've kept the architecture of GPT-4 secret. I torrented the original Llama weights, and have been working on open-source AI since. I'm not about to let a handful of CEOs and self-important luminaries gatekeep the technology, strangle the open-source competition and dictate "alignment" on humanity's behalf. Put it all on GitHub and HF. What I'm saying instead, is that I personally find it neat that we have more or less literally built Searle's Chinese room. Don't you see? It's not that we need to be abstract and philosophical, it's that suddenly a lot of thought experiments are very tangible. And I do wonder if my models might be "feeling" anything when I punish and reward them. That's all.