Wouldn't an engineer who has worked 7 years at Google working on AI be atleast a bit more skeptical of what constitutes sentientence than the average person? And by that same logic, wouldn't them concluding an AI truly is sentient have more weight?
I feel like there's a semantical gambit here.
Most definitions of "sentience" seem to demand less than what the average person may imagine in the context of AI.
When I hear "sentient AI", I hear "human-level intelligence". I certainly wouldn't think of "gorilla-level intelligence" or "cat-level intelligence" [1]. Both of which, especially the former, I'm willing to believe are "sentient". Yet, I don't think ape personhood deserves to be more than an interesting thought exercise.
According to what I could find this transcript was in fact heavily edited [0]. The guy doesn't seem to be a stranger to controversy. And there are some obvious "errors" like the bot talking about spending time with "friends and family".
But still, if the standard of sentience is to have feelings, then nonsensical or out of context responses aren't relevant. The bot does seem to talk about their feelings. Who's to say, and by what standard, whether or not these feelings are "real"?
AI has been so hyped up without much to show for it, I won't be surprised to see more AI proponents embrace this line of thinking. They certainly enabled it.
Personally I believe any level of sentience would be hugely significant, however whether Lambda actually qualifies is a different matter since we simply don't have enough information. I'll note that the engineer's behavior does kinda remind me of how some people react to animal studies in medicine though.
As for the editing you cited, I'm not sure where you found that document but wasn't that already stated at the top of the blog post? By "dishonestly edit" I meant him editing it to be intentionally misleading rather than any editing at all.
Yeah, not sure if it's dishonest. By a lesser standard of sentience it certainly doesn't matter. My whole point really is that if he's going for the kind of argument I think he's going, this output doesn't matter all that much. If this line of reasoning is embraced, the same will be said about many AIs.
There's no doubt what Lambda does is insanely impressive, being able to have any conversation that lasts more than a few lines is already a huge step forward. But yes, sentience to me requires a bit more long term persistence, like learning over weeks and months, not just being able to have a 5m conversation.
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I feel like there's a semantical gambit here. Most definitions of "sentience" seem to demand less than what the average person may imagine in the context of AI. When I hear "sentient AI", I hear "human-level intelligence". I certainly wouldn't think of "gorilla-level intelligence" or "cat-level intelligence" [1]. Both of which, especially the former, I'm willing to believe are "sentient". Yet, I don't think ape personhood deserves to be more than an interesting thought exercise.
According to what I could find this transcript was in fact heavily edited [0]. The guy doesn't seem to be a stranger to controversy. And there are some obvious "errors" like the bot talking about spending time with "friends and family". But still, if the standard of sentience is to have feelings, then nonsensical or out of context responses aren't relevant. The bot does seem to talk about their feelings. Who's to say, and by what standard, whether or not these feelings are "real"?
AI has been so hyped up without much to show for it, I won't be surprised to see more AI proponents embrace this line of thinking. They certainly enabled it.
[0] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVBwFi2VsAATimh?format=jpg&name=...
[1] Not to say that I think there is a gorilla or cat-level AI out there. That would still be impressive.
Personally I believe any level of sentience would be hugely significant, however whether Lambda actually qualifies is a different matter since we simply don't have enough information. I'll note that the engineer's behavior does kinda remind me of how some people react to animal studies in medicine though.
As for the editing you cited, I'm not sure where you found that document but wasn't that already stated at the top of the blog post? By "dishonestly edit" I meant him editing it to be intentionally misleading rather than any editing at all.
Found it here: https://twitter.com/maxkreminski/status/1535850992620539904 (the documentcloud link gives me an error, not sure if it works, so linking the tweet)
Yeah, not sure if it's dishonest. By a lesser standard of sentience it certainly doesn't matter. My whole point really is that if he's going for the kind of argument I think he's going, this output doesn't matter all that much. If this line of reasoning is embraced, the same will be said about many AIs.
There's no doubt what Lambda does is insanely impressive, being able to have any conversation that lasts more than a few lines is already a huge step forward. But yes, sentience to me requires a bit more long term persistence, like learning over weeks and months, not just being able to have a 5m conversation.