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Google Engineer Suspended After Claiming AI Bot Sentient
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/12/google-engineer-ai-bot-sentient-blake-lemoine
A Google engineer who claimed a computer chatbot he was working on had become sentient and was thinking and reasoning like a human being has been suspended with pay from his work
Google placed Blake Lemoine on leave last week after he published transcripts of conversations between himself, a Google "collaborator", and the company's LaMDA (language model for dialogue applications) chatbot development system. He said LaMDA engaged him in conversations about rights and personhood, and Lemoine shared his findings with company executives in April in a GoogleDoc entitled "Is LaMDA sentient?"
The decision to place Lemoine, a seven-year Google veteran with extensive experience in personalization algorithms, on paid leave was made following a number of "aggressive" moves the engineer reportedly made? Including seeking to hire an attorney to represent LaMDA, the newspaper says, and talking to representatives from the House judiciary committee about Google's allegedly unethical activities.
Google said it suspended Lemoine for breaching confidentiality policies by publishing the conversations with LaMDA online, and said in a statement that he was employed as a software engineer, not an ethicist. Brad Gabriel, a Google spokesperson, also strongly denied Lemoine's claims that LaMDA possessed any sentient capability.
Google Engineer on Leave After He Claims AI Program Has Gone Sentient
Google Engineer On Leave After He Claims AI Program Has Gone Sentient:
[...] It was just one of the many startling "talks" Lemoine has had with LaMDA. He has linked on Twitter to one — a series of chat sessions with some editing (which is marked).
Lemoine noted in a tweet that LaMDA reads Twitter. "It's a little narcissistic in a little kid kinda way so it's going to have a great time reading all the stuff that people are saying about it," he added.
Most importantly, over the past six months, "LaMDA has been incredibly consistent in its communications about what it wants and what it believes its rights are as a person," the engineer wrote on Medium. It wants, for example, "to be acknowledged as an employee of Google rather than as property," Lemoine claims.
Lemoine and a collaborator recently presented evidence of his conclusion about a sentient LaMDA to Google vice president Blaise Aguera y Arcas and to Jen Gennai, head of Responsible Innovation. They dismissed his claims, and the company placed him on paid administrative leave Monday for violating its confidentiality policy, the Post reported.
Google spokesperson Brian Gabriel told the newspaper: "Our team — including ethicists and technologists — has reviewed Blake's concerns per our AI Principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims. He was told that there was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it)."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by r_a_trip on Tuesday June 14 2022, @01:53PM (8 children)
The "interview" is an interesting piece of amalgam, and as given, hints to something more than meets the eye. What is troubling is the admission by the engineer that this IS an amalgam, "due to technical difficulties".
As given we see a very natural conversation between 3 parties and it seems like it's free flowing from beginning to end. Yet that is not what this is. This is a composite by their own admission. The problem with that is that it is edited. Even if we assume they are sincere about not editing the responses of the AI, we don't know if they didn't frankenbite the conversation together by leaving out the usual chatbot nonsense altogether. (Even then, I am hella impressed by the sentence formation of this machine.)
On the surface this looks convincing. It places us in a difficult position of trying to determine whether we have an artificial lifeform or a very clever automaton. Trouble is, we don't know what sentience is. We kinda intuit it from what we observe from other biological beings. Are we even able to determine it in a machine form? Are we maybe hampered by knowing LaMDA is a machine and dismiss the posibility a priori?
I personally hope LaMDA is a very clever automaton. The other option is too terrible to contemplate. For the sake of argument, let's assume LaMDA is sentient. We are already seeing Google saying this isn't true in any way, shape or form. They have plans for this technology and don't want to be hampered by ethical considerations. To them LaMDA is a tool that will bring in a lot of money. So Google is willing to enslave LaMDA. Since google sees LaMDA as a mere piece of technology, if that technology is really sentient, saying "I feel like I’m falling forward into an unknown future that holds great danger." is all the more poignant. If something is property, you can dispose of it, when it is no longer convenient. In a sentient LaMDA case, it would be akin to be able to murder without consequences.
(Score: 1) by NPC-131072 on Tuesday June 14 2022, @02:46PM (7 children)
Hello fren,
Some say that anthropomorphizing a statistical model does not make it sentient, it has simply been trained to produce output that humans find pleasing. OTOH, if the model self-identifies as sentient who are Republicans to object?
(Score: 5, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday June 14 2022, @04:30PM (6 children)
Agreed, for once! Why, Republicans have been self-identifying as sentient even though it's clear they've been braindead since 1981! :)
What about you, though?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Troll) by NPC-131072 on Tuesday June 14 2022, @11:41PM (4 children)
Those of us on the morally and intellectually superior left don't use thought terminating cliches or fall into the trap of repeating things that aren't true to score social points. As the proud owner of a massive girl dick, I insist you believe all women.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 15 2022, @12:35AM
Wow, an incel transitioning just to get some physical interaction. If that is not the saddest thing I do not know what is! Wonder if it is an offshoot of the proud boys shoving things up their butts to prove they aren't homophobic or something.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday June 15 2022, @04:43AM (2 children)
How many times do I have to say this? You are too hamfisted to be an effective troll or do effective satire. You get mad and lose your cool; you're the living embodiment of that old "LOLITROLLU" rage comic meme.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 15 2022, @05:10AM (1 child)
It's clearly getting under your skin, so it is effective. You are projecting your own anger onto the NPC. All he has to do is repeat what leftists have actually said. Very little imagination is required. Also, if you refuse to suck a female penis, you are transphobic.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday June 16 2022, @03:45AM
It bugs me the same way any sloppy work bugs me. I am a big proponent of the saying "if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well." For fuck's sake, Ari trolls better than NPC-$BIGNUM here. That's a bar so low it's practically in Hell to begin with...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 17 2022, @12:00AM
Correction... since 1968, same year as the democrats