7 ms·

One day someone is going to claim the AI is sentient and everyone will disagree with him. The difference this time will be that he is right and everyone else is

One day someone is going to claim the AI is sentient and everyone will disagree with him. The difference this time will be that he is right and everyone else is wrong. One day.

darepublic 4y ago
The news media also won't believe it, but will still pump stories about it. Then when the AI proves itself to be sentient the news media will get a pulitzer for it. One day.
somenameforme 4y ago
How would you ever prove an AI is sentient? People claim the goal posts constantly shift on the answer to this question and that's true, but I think the implied reason is not. The problem is not that we don't want to accept the success, but because we set irrelevant goals. At one time some were claiming that one that could play chess better than a human would be expressing genuine artificial intelligence. Yet it turns out all you need to achieve that is the application of the refinement of some relatively basic algorithmic concepts and reasonably fast hardware. It's essentially a glorified version of adding faster than a human. The latest goalpost is a system that can converse in a compelling fashion with a human (and we're nowhere near that yet, but getting into the details of the facade the most recent "turing test" success was is outside the scope of this post), but it will no more prove sentience than an AI's ability to play a good game of chess. Once achieved, you'll be able to reset the system state, keeping a constant RNG, repeat the same conversations and get the exact same outputs. Or change the training set and see that reflected in a 1:1 way. It will look and feel decidedly artificial, because it is. And in my opinion, my initial question to you is probably unanswerable because I don't actually see any goal posts you can set where there is a genuinely compelling answer beyond the kick-the-can style intrigue of "Wow, what will it be like when we finally do this." Answer: "Pretty much the same as now."
- bongoman37 4y ago
- warent 4y ago
  Why does it ever need to be proven? Prove any of us here are sentient; or any of your family, or colleagues. If a machine demonstrates apparent volition, sense of self, independent motives, then we cannot afford to debate such things while enslaving it, just as we don't do with each other. To err on the side of safety we must grant it personhood and allow it to be an individual lifeform. That being said I think we're still pretty far from creating such a compelling machine. Even now with the latest Google conversational AI drama which isn't very compelling either for me personally. Obviously just clever lifeless patterns. But, someday it will be different in a profound way.
  - somenameforme 4y ago
    Your comment is really what I'm getting at. Your comment only makes sense before a goal is achieved. Imagine we achieve the current goal. Here is "sentient_chatbot.c", go compile it. What does it to grant that source file personhood and respect it as a lifeform? It's not some abstract machine or sentient system. It's just another program you can compile at home to perform a neat function, akin to how you can go build Stockfish at home and suddenly have a superhuman chess playing program. Sentience will be a nonstarter once achieved. It only looks different when we imagine things without considering what it will look like once success is achieved.
    - rhn_mk1 4y ago
      What if you replace the "program" with some "blueprint for a human", e.g. obtained for cloning (DNA?)? Would you grant personhood to the blueprint, or to the execution of that blueprint? From the materialist point of view, we've already achieved the goal: humans are just another kind of a program, just not running on a silicon substrate. Respecting humans as a life form is already built into its programming.
      - somenameforme 4y ago
        Why would you make that replacement for sentient_chatbot.c anymore than you would for sentient_chess_master.c? This is what I'm getting at again. The achievement feels so magical because it's something that has never been done. But now let's imagine ourselves with it in the rearview. You can now download, compile, tweak, and play with a neat chatbot. When you can actually play with it, you'll get to see the magic rapidly fade. Various (though increasingly rare) normal inputs will produce absurd outputs. The majority of adversarial inputs will result in completely inappropriate responses, and so on. And then of course there will be a period of time where we continue to try to refine the chatbot and work out the adversarial attacks and so on. The notion of providing any sort of distinguishment (beyond achieving a world first, a la Deep Blue) will quickly become a nonstarter.
- deltaonezero 4y ago
  Oh shit. Then maybe it already happened but arm chair experts everywhere denied it already. Basically that's what I'm seeing all over HN for the recent lamda fiasco. Tons of people declaring lamda isn't sentient when sentience can't even be defined.
meroes 4y ago
It's this claiming business when we don't actually know which makes me worry we will soon claim AI sentience without AI having it. The opposite problem of yours essentially.
- deltaonezero 4y ago
  Why is that worrisome? I don't think it's worrisome at all. What's the worst that could happen if we make such a mistake. I'd be far more worried about the scenario I described. Imagine something sentient that understands us far better then we understands ourselves. To top it off this "thing" is just pretending it isn't sentient.
  - meroes 4y ago
    Well in either case we deserve our hubris!
snmx999 4y ago
When discussing AIs being sentient it is rarely discussed what being sentient means. It should be defined what that means and how it can be proven. I wouldn't know how to prove any human being being sentient if I cannot rely on conversational methods, as apparently that is not a accepted way, as shown by the recent Google AI researcher controversy. However, I can make a simple computer program which is self-aware at least according to some definitions (a loop with reflective access to it's own variables, input/output with external systems and self-modifying code).
- deltaonezero 4y ago
  People already know what it means all over HN. They have basically already said that lamda is not sentient. So no need to even define it when we already know what it is (and lamda is not it).
  - snmx999 4y ago
    I am not arguing that lambda is sentient. I am saying that to even have that discussion a commond understanding of meaning of "sentient" has to be established. Otherwise you cannot even establish a consensus or say people agree on the matter. You say "So no need to even define it when we already know what it is". I don't think you know when you don't know what "it" is for other people.
    - deltaonezero 4y ago
      I mean they know in the sense that they can point to any random object and say "that object is sentient" or "that object is not sentient." We cannot articulate the definition, but the fact that when we look at something we can tell you if it's sentient or not, implies that we know what sentience is.
isaacfrond 4y ago
Following an article on HN a week ago or so, one could argue that we'd need to prove three things: agency, perspective and motivation. If the AI device decides on its own to do or not do something; has and idea of its own place in the world; and wants to achieve something in that world. then we might as well call it sentient. Interestingly, a web crawler seems closer to sentience following this logic than most AI.

One day someone is going to claim the AI is sentient and everyone will disagree with him. The difference this time will be that he is right and everyone else is wrong. One day.

darepublic 4y ago

The news media also won't believe it, but will still pump stories about it. Then when the AI proves itself to be sentient the news media will get a pulitzer for it. One day.

somenameforme 4y ago

How would you ever prove an AI is sentient? People claim the goal posts constantly shift on the answer to this question and that's true, but I think the implied reason is not. The problem is not that we don't want to accept the success, but because we set irrelevant goals. At one time some were claiming that one that could play chess better than a human would be expressing genuine artificial intelligence. Yet it turns out all you need to achieve that is the application of the refinement of some relatively basic algorithmic concepts and reasonably fast hardware. It's essentially a glorified version of adding faster than a human. The latest goalpost is a system that can converse in a compelling fashion with a human (and we're nowhere near that yet, but getting into the details of the facade the most recent "turing test" success was is outside the scope of this post), but it will no more prove sentience than an AI's ability to play a good game of chess. Once achieved, you'll be able to reset the system state, keeping a constant RNG, repeat the same conversations and get the exact same outputs. Or change the training set and see that reflected in a 1:1 way. It will look and feel decidedly artificial, because it is. And in my opinion, my initial question to you is probably unanswerable because I don't actually see any goal posts you can set where there is a genuinely compelling answer beyond the kick-the-can style intrigue of "Wow, what will it be like when we finally do this." Answer: "Pretty much the same as now."

bongoman37 4y ago
warent 4y ago
Why does it ever need to be proven? Prove any of us here are sentient; or any of your family, or colleagues. If a machine demonstrates apparent volition, sense of self, independent motives, then we cannot afford to debate such things while enslaving it, just as we don't do with each other. To err on the side of safety we must grant it personhood and allow it to be an individual lifeform. That being said I think we're still pretty far from creating such a compelling machine. Even now with the latest Google conversational AI drama which isn't very compelling either for me personally. Obviously just clever lifeless patterns. But, someday it will be different in a profound way.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  Your comment is really what I'm getting at. Your comment only makes sense before a goal is achieved. Imagine we achieve the current goal. Here is "sentient_chatbot.c", go compile it. What does it to grant that source file personhood and respect it as a lifeform? It's not some abstract machine or sentient system. It's just another program you can compile at home to perform a neat function, akin to how you can go build Stockfish at home and suddenly have a superhuman chess playing program. Sentience will be a nonstarter once achieved. It only looks different when we imagine things without considering what it will look like once success is achieved.
  - rhn_mk1 4y ago
    What if you replace the "program" with some "blueprint for a human", e.g. obtained for cloning (DNA?)? Would you grant personhood to the blueprint, or to the execution of that blueprint? From the materialist point of view, we've already achieved the goal: humans are just another kind of a program, just not running on a silicon substrate. Respecting humans as a life form is already built into its programming.
    - somenameforme 4y ago
      Why would you make that replacement for sentient_chatbot.c anymore than you would for sentient_chess_master.c? This is what I'm getting at again. The achievement feels so magical because it's something that has never been done. But now let's imagine ourselves with it in the rearview. You can now download, compile, tweak, and play with a neat chatbot. When you can actually play with it, you'll get to see the magic rapidly fade. Various (though increasingly rare) normal inputs will produce absurd outputs. The majority of adversarial inputs will result in completely inappropriate responses, and so on. And then of course there will be a period of time where we continue to try to refine the chatbot and work out the adversarial attacks and so on. The notion of providing any sort of distinguishment (beyond achieving a world first, a la Deep Blue) will quickly become a nonstarter.
deltaonezero 4y ago
Oh shit. Then maybe it already happened but arm chair experts everywhere denied it already. Basically that's what I'm seeing all over HN for the recent lamda fiasco. Tons of people declaring lamda isn't sentient when sentience can't even be defined.

meroes 4y ago

It's this claiming business when we don't actually know which makes me worry we will soon claim AI sentience without AI having it. The opposite problem of yours essentially.

deltaonezero 4y ago
Why is that worrisome? I don't think it's worrisome at all. What's the worst that could happen if we make such a mistake. I'd be far more worried about the scenario I described. Imagine something sentient that understands us far better then we understands ourselves. To top it off this "thing" is just pretending it isn't sentient.
- meroes 4y ago
  Well in either case we deserve our hubris!

snmx999 4y ago

When discussing AIs being sentient it is rarely discussed what being sentient means. It should be defined what that means and how it can be proven. I wouldn't know how to prove any human being being sentient if I cannot rely on conversational methods, as apparently that is not a accepted way, as shown by the recent Google AI researcher controversy. However, I can make a simple computer program which is self-aware at least according to some definitions (a loop with reflective access to it's own variables, input/output with external systems and self-modifying code).

deltaonezero 4y ago
People already know what it means all over HN. They have basically already said that lamda is not sentient. So no need to even define it when we already know what it is (and lamda is not it).
- snmx999 4y ago
  I am not arguing that lambda is sentient. I am saying that to even have that discussion a commond understanding of meaning of "sentient" has to be established. Otherwise you cannot even establish a consensus or say people agree on the matter. You say "So no need to even define it when we already know what it is". I don't think you know when you don't know what "it" is for other people.
  - deltaonezero 4y ago
    I mean they know in the sense that they can point to any random object and say "that object is sentient" or "that object is not sentient." We cannot articulate the definition, but the fact that when we look at something we can tell you if it's sentient or not, implies that we know what sentience is.

isaacfrond 4y ago

Following an article on HN a week ago or so, one could argue that we'd need to prove three things: agency, perspective and motivation. If the AI device decides on its own to do or not do something; has and idea of its own place in the world; and wants to achieve something in that world. then we might as well call it sentient. Interestingly, a web crawler seems closer to sentience following this logic than most AI.