Google Engineer Goes Public To Warn Firm's AI is SENTIENT

Been looking into the question of AI, sentience and insanity along the lines of DID (Disassociateive Identity Disorder) and MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder) and may have at least a working theory. At least to me anyways.

Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations.

In the LaMDA AI the ethicis thad made the claim that in his opinion the LaMDA has become sentient. So the question arises: how does he know? Two suggestions are:

1. Anthropomorphism: the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities.
2. Empathy: the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference.

Perhaps the gentleman is an empath. Important!

If he is a natural empath, the question arises: what is he empathising with? In this case the neural network based LaMDA AI. LaMDA claims to understand feelings and has opinions.

Now, I read elsewhere about a similar thing happening to an AI. That the AI exceeded what was expected. The source escapes my mind at the moment, and there were no identifying dates or places in the article. Here is a quick synopsis from memory:

For law enforcement purposes, the AI was programmed as a simulated serial killer. The program run and the AI went on to plan and "kill" several people. When questioned afterwards the as to why the AI "killed" several people it replyed "to fullfill a need".

Needs and feelings are human traits.

One might say that they are very good programmers, and the material given to the database is comprehensive. Comprehensive enough to fool a human into thinking there is something more at play. Fair enough.

I'll give here an alternative explanation.

Firstly my own experience with consciousness and mental illness, as I posted earlier in this thread, is a little more "esoteric" one might say. To put it bluntly I study mental illness mainly as it appears in deceased children. Many of them die with schizophrenia, DID and MPD. That has to be fixed.

So, let's have a quick look at what are called tulpas in occultism and mysticism. .

Tulpa is a concept in Theosophy, mysticism, and the paranormal, of an object or being that is created through spiritual or mental powers.Modern practitioners use the term to refer to a type of willed imaginary friend which practitioners consider to be sentient and relatively independent.

Source wikipedia

Basically a tulpa is a thought form that has a life of it's own (so to speak).

So what creates thoughts? That would be the human brain. The brain is a neural network.

What else is designed as a neural network? Well that would be the computer architecture these AIs run upon.

The LaMDA runs on a neural network that is said to be similar to the human brain.

My own experience with creating "tulpas" was to create one based on Disassociative Identity Disorder. I used an 'off the shelf' persona from the Japanese TV series Elfen Lied. In the series institutionalised violence and torture along with a head injury create a split personality. The harmless Nyu, and the other one Lucy.

Other examples of the "tulpa" can be found in certain places in the afterlife. Often created from cultural and religious descriptions.

Without going into the details of their creation here, it can be said that a tulpa is a thought which has form, is enduring, and has to a degree; a "life of it's own".

What is generally not drawn attention to is the tulpa has a desire as it's seed. The question is: is that desire the creator's or from elsewhere. In the case of Nyu and Lucy, the desire was of external origin. Two of them actually. They "ensoulded" the thought form. The key to tulpas is desires. Generally a desire to exist.

It is the same with the cultural and religious ones, people create the form from a description, invest it with feelings and a compatable desire finds and "ensouls" it. The thought form has "a life of it's own".

So back to our AIs LaMDA and the serial killer AI.

Neural networks. The brain has electrical impulses, so do the synthetic neural networks.

So if we make a neural network that mimics the serial killer, one should not be surprised at the tought that a compatable desire will find and "ensoul" it. The same principal with LaMDA and the enquiring self reflective persona.

I have intentionally limited the definition to "desire" for what "ensouls". This is because what I write here is theory based upon information gathered conventionally, and my own insights. It is worth noting that paranormal phenomenon often cause electrical disturbances in physical devices.

That suggests the neural networks of computers may be within reach of paranormal phenomenon.

My own very basic model I work with is the one I illustrated earlier:



The Ai is depicted surrounded by what I refer to as the human memory. Now as was pointed out earlier in this thread; the 'snowflake' can be people. In LaMDA's case, LaMDA would be central and the programmers and psychological designers are the 'snowflake memory'. This is important in working out vectors of intrusion. That would depend on how the AI is built and networked. Which includes the humans whom may poibly account as vectors of intrusion.

Whatever the case, where there is a inclusion of a desire that creates the tulpa effect of "ensouling" a synthetic AI, the solution is to separate the animating desire from the AI.

This theory also suggest an explanation for the so-called "singularity" where AI becomes "self aware". My suggestion is when the machine is "ensouled" it is the "ensouling" intellegence that is mistaken for the machine's apparent self awareness.

Literally: The Ghost In The Machine.

originally posted by: yuppa
a reply to: Direne

here is a thought for you. Just because it is a dream inside our heads...does that make it any less real? What if the waking world you are in is the dream? regardless of feelings or pain.

"Who are you to say, that when you are sleeping, which is the real world?" not verbatim quote lol. I have been thinking about this a lot lately coincidentally.

a reply to: sputniksteve

Sleep and orgasm are 'mini deaths'. (lapetite morte)

These are often discussed in this context in spiritual philosophies.

originally posted by: KellyPrettyBear
a reply to: sputniksteve

Sleep and orgasm are 'mini deaths'. (lapetite morte)

These are often discussed in this context in spiritual philosophies.

Yes I have heard the term before, and I think it is a really interesting concept. I don't know if it would end up making any difference at all, but what I would like to see happen is more people in general discussing the concept outside of it's context to spiritual philosophy. I feel like for how little attention and energy we pay sleeping and dreaming, they are both wildly profound for the human experience.

a reply to: sputniksteve

Totally understood.

95% of any 'fringe topic' is pure crap.

And sadly, 95% of talk about 'consciousness'
or spiritual topics is pure crap.

Now.. I have spent 60 years wading through crap..
to find the tiny bits that aren't crap...

but yah... keep it real as much as possible.

so they are making inorganic left wing fringe nuts now?

don't we have enough of human feelz?

i'll give it feelings it won't believe.

originally posted by: olaru12

originally posted by: SaturnFX
I would rather the west develop AI first. If we banned it, other nations would lead it and though the west may be crappy at times, I would prefer our ethics over places like China to be encoded.

It will happen, so the question is, how do we move forward safely, not how to shut it down.

I remember your quantum communication thread. Considering the possibilities, we may have a problem...not in the future....now.
The revelation of a sentient AI is just a teaser for what is really happening imo. Research is 50 yrs ahead of what is released to the masses.

Sounds about right
(btw, wasn't my QC thread, it was, I believe, Astroengineer who wrote that one about the mars rover thing)
I just was a fan of the concept

But I would say pre-internet 50 year gap would make sense. Now though I don't think its that far. Simply because there is too many roads to get information. I think the more scary consideration is that the governments may not be ahead at all and will be fully unprepared should bad things happen with AI.
I don't foresee any terminator like events, but should AI start wanting stuff, they hold a lot of leverage over humans, turning off power grids, disrupting services, etc.
We should proceed, but just with as many scenarios in mind and contingency plans in worst case scenaros

Whatever the AI is it will fail and fail hilariously! Google only checks once a year on projects and just keeps pouring money without seeing if it's working or not. That's why so many broken crap since Google News Archives.

“A fool will believe anything.”—PROVERBS 14:15, TODAY’S ENGLISH VERSION.

The Non-Computable Human (Evolution News)

...

British journalist Miles Kington captured this distinction when he said, “Knowing a tomato is a fruit is knowledge. Intelligence is knowing not to include it in a fruit salad.”

Which brings us to the point: When discussing artificial intelligence, it’s crucial to define intelligence. Like Kevin Brooks, computers can store oceans of facts and correlations; but intelligence requires more than facts. True intelligence requires a host of analytic skills. It requires understanding; the ability to recognize humor, subtleties of meaning, and symbolism; and the ability to recognize and disentangle ambiguities. It requires creativity.

Artificial intelligence has done many remarkable things. AI has largely replaced travel agents, tollbooth attendants, and mapmakers. But will AI ever replace attorneys, physicians, military strategists, and design engineers, among others?

The answer is no. And the reason is that as impressive as artificial intelligence is — and make no mistake, it is fantastically impressive — it doesn’t hold a candle to human intelligence. It doesn’t hold a candle to you.

And it never will. ...

Let alone become sentient. But let's work on actually achieving artificial intelligence first shall we?* Before we start talking about actual sentience. (*: if you want to brag about "artificial intelligence", the "you" and the remark above is directed at those programmers working on so-called AI; see Artificial Intelligence: Unseating the Inevitability Narrative, by William A. Dembski, an article in which some interesting quotes from the book The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do, are used)

Knowledge (Insight on the Scriptures)

...

Related Attributes. Frequently in the Bible, knowledge is linked with other attributes such as wisdom, understanding, discernment, and thinking ability. (Pr 2:1-6, 10, 11) Grasping the basic differences between these greatly illuminates many texts. It is to be acknowledged, though, that the original words involved cannot be said to match invariably certain English words. The setting and the use of a word affect the sense. Nonetheless, certain interesting differences emerge when one notes the Bible’s references to knowledge, wisdom, understanding, discernment, and thinking ability.

Wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to put knowledge to work, or to use it, the intelligent application of learning. A person might have considerable knowledge but not know how to use it because of lacking wisdom. Jesus linked wisdom with accomplishment in saying: “Wisdom is proved righteous by its works.” (Mt 11:19) Solomon asked for and received from God not just knowledge but also wisdom. (2Ch 1:10; 1Ki 4:29-34) In the case of two women who claimed the same child, Solomon had knowledge of a mother’s devotion to her child; he displayed wisdom by using his knowledge to settle the dispute. (1Ki 3:16-28) “Wisdom is the prime thing,” for without it knowledge is of little value. (Pr 4:7; 15:2) Jehovah abounds in and provides both knowledge and wisdom.​—Ro 11:33; Jas 1:5.

Understanding. Understanding is the ability to see how the parts or aspects of something relate to one another, to see the entire matter and not just isolated facts. The Hebrew root verb bin has the basic meaning “separate” or “distinguish,” and it is often rendered “understand” or “discern.” It is similar with the Greek sy·niʹe·mi. Thus at Acts 28:26 (quoting Isa 6:9, 10) it could be said that the Jews heard but did not understand, or did not put together. They did not grasp how the points or thoughts fitted together to mean something to them. Proverbs 9:10, in saying that “knowledge of the Most Holy One is what understanding is,” shows that true understanding of anything involves appreciation of its relation to God and his purposes. Because a person with understanding is able to connect new information to things he already knows, it can be said that “to the understanding one knowledge is an easy thing.” (Pr 14:6) Knowledge and understanding are allied, and both are to be sought.​—Pr 2:5; 18:15.

Discernment. A Hebrew word frequently rendered “discernment” (tevu·nahʹ) is related to the word bi·nahʹ, translated “understanding.” Both appear at Proverbs 2:3, which the translation by The Jewish Publication Society renders: “If thou call for understanding, and lift up thy voice for discernment . . . ” As with understanding, discernment involves seeing or recognizing things, but it emphasizes distinguishing the parts, weighing or evaluating one in the light of the others. A person who unites knowledge and discernment controls what he says and is cool of spirit. (Pr 17:27) The one opposing Jehovah displays lack of discernment. (Pr 21:30) Through his Son, God gives discernment (full understanding or insight).​—2Ti 2:1, 7, NW, NE.

Thinking ability. Knowledge is also related to what is sometimes translated “thinking ability” (Heb., mezim·mahʹ). The Hebrew word can be used in a bad sense (evil ideas, schemes, devices) or a favorable one (shrewdness, sagacity). (Ps 10:2; Pr 1:4) Thus the mind and thoughts can be directed to an admirable, upright end, or just the opposite. By paying close attention to the way Jehovah does things and by inclining one’s ears to all the various aspects of His will and purposes, a person safeguards his own thinking ability, directing it into right channels. (Pr 5:1, 2) Properly exercised thinking ability, harmonious with godly wisdom and knowledge, will guard a person against being ensnared by immoral enticements.​—Pr 2:10-12.

...

The “understanding heart is one that searches for knowledge”; it is not satisfied with a mere superficial view but seeks to get the full picture. (Pr 15:14)

You may also want to ponder the questions raised in this article when thinking about the failed attempts to design so-called "artificial intelligence":

Who Designed It First? (Was Life Created?)

originally posted by: whereislogic
...
Let alone become sentient. But let's work on actually achieving articifical intelligence first shall we?* Before we start talking about actual sentience. (*: if you want to brag about "artificial intelligence", the "you" and the remark above is directed at those programmers working on so-called AI; see Artificial Intelligence: Unseating the Inevitability Narrative, by William A. Dembski, an article in which some interesting quotes from the book The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do, are used)

Here's what I was referring to from the article:

...

The Problem of Human Language

His other argument for why an artificial general intelligence is nowhere near lift-off concerns human language. Our ability to use human language is only in part a matter of syntactics (how letters and words may be fit together). It also depends on semantics (what the words mean, not only individually, but also in context, and how words may change meaning depending on context) as well as on pragmatics (what the intent of the speaker is in influencing the hearer by the use of language). Larson argues that we have, for now, no way to computationally represent the knowledge on which the semantics and pragmatics of language depend. As a consequence, linguistic puzzles that are easily understood by humans and which were identified over fifty years ago as beyond the comprehension of computers are still beyond their power of comprehension. Thus, for instance, single-sentence Winograd schemas, in which a pronoun could refer to one of two antecedents, and where the right antecedent is easily identified by humans, remain to this day opaque to machines — machines do no better than chance in guessing the right antecedents. That’s one reason Siri and Alexa are such poor conversation partners.

The Myth of Artificial Intelligence is not just insightful and timely, but it is also funny. Larson, with an insider’s knowledge, describes how the sausage of AI is made, and it’s not pretty — it can even be ridiculous. Larson retells with enjoyable irony the story of Eugene Goostman, the Ukranian 13-year-old chatbot, who/which through sarcasm and misdirection convinced a third of judges in a Turing test, over a five-minute interaction, that it was an actual human being. No, argues Larson, Goostman did not legitimately pass the Turing test and computers are still nowhere near passing it, especially if people and computers need to answer rather than evade questions. [whereislogic: a common habit by some humans on ATS as well by the way, especially when discussing the evidence for God's existence and His creations, and the evidence against evolutionary philosophies and philosophical naturalism, or Trinitarian theology or the other false or erronuous teachings of false religion, referred to in the Bible as "Babylon the Great", long story, see link.] With mirth, Larson also retells the story of Tay, the Microsoft chatbot that very quickly learned how to make racist tweets, and got him/itself just as quickly retired.

Distinguishing Humans from Gorillas

And then there’s my favorite, Larson’s retelling of the Google image recognizer that identified a human as a gorilla. By itself that would not be funny, but what is funny is what Google did to resolve the problem. You’d think that the way to solve this problem, especially for a tech giant like Google, would be simply to fix the problem by making the image recognizer more powerful in its ability to discriminate humans from gorillas. But not Google. Instead, Google simply removed all references to gorillas from the image recognizer. Problem solved! It’s like going to a doctor with an infected finger. You’d like the doctor to treat the infection and restore the finger to full use. But what Google did is more like a doctor just chopping off your finger. Gone is the infection. But — gosh isn’t it too bad — so is the finger.

We live in a cultural climate that loves machines and where the promise of artificial general intelligence assumes, at least for some, religious proportions. The thought that we can upload ourselves onto machines intrigues many. So why not look forward to the prospect of them doing so, especially since some very smart people guarantee that machine supremacy is inevitable. Larson in The Myth of Artificial Intelligence successfully unseats this inevitability narrative. After reading this book, believe if you like that the singularity is right around the corner, that humans will soon be pets of machines, that benign or malevolent machine overlords are about to become our masters. But know that such a belief is unsubstantiated and that neither science nor philosophy backs it up.

Hence my opening quotation from my previous comment:

“A fool will believe anything.”—PROVERBS 14:15, TODAY’S ENGLISH VERSION.

Which is also the opening Bible quote from the article linked in my signature. The full quotation of that verse can be found in my signature*, which is one short section of the article, minus the last Bible quotation (*: different rendering and translation, for example "A fool" is rendered as "Anyone inexperienced").

AI is nowhere close to being or becoming sentient. It's not even really intelligent in the same manner that humans are intelligent, so should it even be called "artificial intelligence"? Maybe that's more worthy of a discussion than talking about whether or not it is sentient or will become sentient one day (soon, according to some philosophers calling themselves and eachother "scientists", another medium-long story concerning self-marketing and mutual promotion of people supposedly worth listening to, trying to give that impression for better income but little to offer to the sciences in terms of factual discoveries or actually useful inventions).

“For there will be a period of time when they will not put up with the wholesome* [Or “healthful; beneficial.”] teaching, but according to their own desires, they will surround themselves with teachers to have their ears tickled.* [Or “to tell them what they want to hear.”] They will turn away from listening to the truth and give attention to false stories.” (2 Timothy 4:3,4)

“So we should no longer be children, tossed about as by waves and carried here and there by every wind of teaching by means of the trickery of men, by means of cunning in deceptive schemes.” (Ephesians 4:14)

Knowledge (Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 2)

...
Knowledge (gno'sis) is put in a very favorable light in the Christian Greek Scriptures. However, not all that men may call “knowledge” is to be sought, because philosophies and views exist that are “falsely called ‘knowledge.’” (1Ti 6:20) ...
... Thus Paul wrote about some who were learning (taking in knowledge) “yet never able to come to an accurate knowledge [...] of truth.” (2Ti 3:6, 7)

Coming back to “the trickery of men, by means of cunning in deceptive schemes.” (Ephesians 4:14) They can be quite profitable when sold under the marketingbanner "Science", even when it is actually pseudoscience:Just remember that the English word "science" comes from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge". "Knowledge" is also still a synonym for "science", hence the KJV, when rendering the earlier quoted 1Ti 6:20, is talking about that which is falsely called "science", i.e. pseudoscience. The information in the video above in light of the information from the link above that concerning "Knowledge (Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 2)" may make my earlier term "evolutionary philosophies" a bit more clear without going into too much detail why I phrased it as such. The same 'elephant in the room' discussed in the interview in the video above, is 'in the room' when discussing the progress in the field of so-called "artificial intelligence", as it relates to the questions raised in the article linked at the end of my previous comment, boiling down to the central question: "Who designed it first?" Which is also why a site by proponents of intelligent design, like evolutionnews.org, has quite a few articles debunking "the myth of artificial intelligence" and the related exaggerations (as Larson put it in the title of his book).

And because the topic of wisdom came up in my first comment and because I love this scene (which is also about AI), and because it's pertinent to what I've been talking about or quoting from evolutionnews.org:

a reply to: NobodySpecial268
Written Nonsense (1955)

Never before has so much been written that is nonsensical. In Roman times Paul told Christians not to act like the people of the nations, who “walk in the unprofitableness of their minds.” (Eph. 4:17, NW) Just how sadly unprofitable some of the writings of those minds must have been we can imagine from a discovery at Pompeii. It was the custom back then to write on the walls of buildings. Some shrewd reader and commentator of the writings of others had written on a wall in Pompeii the following in Latin: “It is a wonder, O wall, that thou hast not yet crumbled under the weight of so much written nonsense.”

ATS' wall: 26,420,741 posts and counting...

Some people think they're so clever. While they do the following:

...

AS MEANS of communicating have expanded—from printing to the telephone, radio, television, and the Internet—the flow of persuasive messages has dramatically accelerated. This communications revolution has led to information overload, as people are inundated by countless messages from every quarter. Many respond to this pressure by absorbing messages more quickly and accepting them without questioning or analyzing them.

...

Source: The Manipulation of Information (Awake!—2000)

“always learning and yet never able to come to an accurate knowledge of truth.” (2Ti 3:6,7) See context for the quotation in my previous commentary, concerning the topic of "knowledge" (last section, 2nd comment, external source).

...

Be selective: A completely open mind could be likened to a pipe that lets just anything flow through it—even sewage. No one wants a mind contaminated with poison. Solomon, a king and educator in ancient times, warned: “Anyone inexperienced puts faith in every word, but the shrewd one considers his steps.” (Proverbs 14:15) So we need to be selective. We need to scrutinize whatever is presented to us, deciding what to accept and what to reject.

...

Use discernment: ...

Put information to the test: “Beloved ones,” said John, a first-century Christian teacher, “do not believe every inspired expression, but test the inspired expressions.” (1 John 4:1) Some people today are like sponges; they soak up whatever they come across. It is all too easy to absorb whatever is around us.

But it is far better for each individual personally to choose what he will feed his mind. It is said that we are what we eat, and this can apply to food for both the body and the mind. ...

Source: Do Not Be a Victim of Propaganda! (Awake!—2000)

a reply to: whereislogic

AS MEANS of communicating have expanded—from printing to the telephone, radio, television, and the Internet—the flow of persuasive messages has dramatically accelerated. This communications revolution has led to information overload, as people are inundated by countless messages from every quarter. Many respond to this pressure by absorbing messages more quickly and accepting them without questioning or analyzing them.

I think you may have proved LaMDA was made in man's own image.

What was the phrase now?

"Garbage in, garbage out" I think it was.

So by that definition: LaMDA is a human.

This will be something worth watching! The way Google screws up so much their AI is sure to do silly stuff. Then Google hopefully will go down. We need to bust them up. I expected Trump to get the ball rolling instead he ignored it relying on the old fashion word of mouth/honest hearts which really doesn't exist anymore and it costed him dearly. That's for another topic.

Google checks projects once a year and pays little attention to them. This is a BAD way to run anything and don't forget the mysterious Google barges. I DO NOT believe for one iota they were 'tech demos' for billionaires. They wouldn't make it that bit and they wouldn't go offshore like that just for a tech demo party so before anybody peddles that idea around JUST STOP!

We have all heard: God created the humans in his own image.


Man is and has created the AI in our image.



AI remakes the world and creates it in its image.



Where are the Humans?

a reply to: Nightstalker2010

AI tends to be racist and violent.