It's more about the competitive navigation of the constraints of physical environments resulting in systems that need to adapt to such navigation developing reflexive mental processes beneficial to the propagation of their reproductive potentialities as instantiated in RNA/DNA. — Baden

Haha. Nice sentence. :smile:

I do not believe I am sentient because I produce words and I do not have any justification for believing other beings or things are sentient simply because they produce words. — Baden

This approach works well too.

You got the simplified version. The original one was GPT-3's answer to "What is ice cream?"

:smile:

ust curious - a ridiculous hypothetical. If a spaceship landed on the White House lawn tomorrow, and slimy, tentacled (clearly organic) entities emerged demanding trade goods (and ice cream), would you insist it was their burden to prove their sentience? — Real Gone Cat

It's a good question, raises a lot of issues. Again though, you need a framework of approach otherwise you're left wondering whether anything from which coherent language comes from is sentient. And that framework needs both to be justifiable as well as justifying.

Belief in exceptionalism of humans originates from religion, ie it is a religious belief. — Isaac

@Wayfarer

This is not a case of a "belief in the exceptionalism of humans." That's an imprecise assessment.

This is a case of the exceptionalism of some set of animals in contrast to machines. I'm not getting a religious vibe.

Not at all. But you're not satisfactorily – non-rhetorically – answering my questions in reply to your prior post .

, , et al.

Here is an interesting short story called "The Cage" by A. Bertram Chandler :

https://issuu.com/ezywoo/docs/the_cage__bertram_chandler

I just reread it. Embarrassingly dated, but I love the final line.

Not at all. — 180 Proof

That's a fundamental disagreement.

I'm satisfied with my answers to your questions. :smile:

:yawn:

Thanks :smile:

No. But neither does LaMDA. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Not to you. To Lemione it does. That's the point. You're talking about your personal judgement of an ineffable factor and simply declaring that to be the appropriate global view.

Incidentally, a schizophrenic can experience a kind of pan-sentience. The objects are watching me. The mind is capable of experiencing or conceiving of the world as pan-sentient. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Indeed. One of the reason we know something's wrong with them. So I'll ask again, with more clarity...has anyone whose judgement you otherwise trust to be sane considered your sofa sentient?

The answer is obviously no. So there's absolutely no 'slippery slope' argument to be made here. There's no problem with where we stop. No-one (sane) considers rocks sentient. People (intelligent, sane ones) consider certain instances of AI sentient. You arbitrarily deciding that anything without DNA can't be doesn't even approach a sensible counterargument.

Again, sentience is the state of having feelings/awareness. It is not the outputting of linguistically coherent responses to some input. — Baden

It's not the nature of the state, it's the means of testing it that's in question here.

let's realize how low a bar it is to consider appropriate outputs in mostly gramatically correct forms of language to some linguistic inputs (except challenging ones) to be evidence of feelings. — Baden

OK, that sounds like a good approach. So what's the 'higher bar' test you propose?

The ability to produce (a fascimile of) language is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition of sentience nor, without some justificatory framework, is it even any evidence thereof. — Baden

No, I agree, but what matters with AI is not the ability to produce language but the speculation about the means by which it is done. An mp3 player on shuffle could produce language responses. It's not an AI. What makes AI different is not the output but the method by which that output is produced.

___

To be clear, I don't have an opinion on whether LaMDA is sentient, I've not spent any time with it. The argument is that is otherwise intelligent and sane people think it is sentient, countering their view by saying "it can't be, it's made of wires" is not only weak but has precisely the same pattern as previous denials of moral worth. You say "it must be biological" as if that were obvious, but the exact same "obviousness" was applied in the past to other criteria. Criteria which previously excluded slaves, children, the mentally ill...

It's ought not be about criteria at all. The moment we start tempering our compassion with a set of arbitrary, socially convenient, criteria for when it is and is not required be applied we become more inhuman than the AIs we're trying to distance ourselves from.

People (intelligent, sane ones) consider certain instances of AI sentient. — Isaac

Can you provide an example of this apart from the engineer in question. On what basis do they consider it sentient?

The argument is that is otherwise intelligent and sane people think it is sentient — Isaac

To my knowledge one person has possibly* made this claim. His psychological history is unknown.


*It may be a promotional stunt.

To my knowledge one person has possibly* made this claim. His psychological history is unknown.


*It may be a promotional stunt. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Yeah, it may be. And if it is, or he's gone mad, or is lying, or was on drugs or whatever, then any of those situations would constitute evidence that LaMDA is not sentient. But those are not the pieces of evidence you've provided. You've assumed he must be one of those things because you've already concluded LaMDA cannot be sentient. It's that conclusion I'm taking issue with.

The argument is that is otherwise intelligent and sane people think it is sentient, countering their view by saying "it can't be, it's made of wires" is not only weak but has precisely the same pattern as previous denials of moral worth. You say "it must be biological" as if that were obvious, but the exact same "obviousness" was applied in the past to other criteria. — Isaac

I don't recall saying that.


At any rate, my most current formulation is:

Anyone claiming a machine might be sentient - an extraordinary claim - bears the burden of proof. — ZzzoneiroCosm

They should have a very, very, very good reason for making this claim.

You've assumed he must be one of those things because you've already concluded LaMDA cannot be sentient. — Isaac

You're putting words in my mouth now. This suggests you have an agenda.

At any rate, my most current formulation is:

Anyone claiming a machine might be sentient - an extraordinary claim - bears the burden of proof. — ZzzoneiroCosm


They should have a very, very, very good reason for making this claim. — ZzzoneiroCosm

"It seems sentient."

It's the very highest proof possible for sentience since there are no other agreed measures.

Yeah, it may be. And if it is, or he's gone mad, or is lying, or was on drugs or whatever, then any of those situations would constitute evidence that LaMDA is not sentient. — Isaac

Even if the man is completely sane, he's only one man. No one else has made his claim and many of his colleagues have claimed the opposite.

Even if the man is completely sane, he's only one man. No one else has made his claim and many of his colleagues have claimed the opposite. — ZzzoneiroCosm

As above...

"It seems sentient."

It's the very highest proof possible for sentience since there are no other agreed measures. — Isaac

"It seems sentient." — Isaac

That's not a very good reason to make such an extraordinary claim. Many, many things seem to be X and turn out to be Y.

It's the very highest proof possible for sentience since there are no other agreed measures. — Isaac

Wrong in more than one way. Apart from the self-evidence of self-sentience, sentience can never be proven. It can only be accepted.

I accept that other human beings are sentient because I'm sentient and they look and behave like I do. Biologically, we're of the same species. As to other organisms, I accept that some of them are sentient - animals - and leave the question open in other cases - viruses, ameobas, etc.

But I can never prove my fellow human beings are sentient.

That's not a very good reason to make such an extraordinary claim. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I think the only way out here is to follow 180 Proof and say the claim that a machine is sentient is "not at all" extraordinary.

That's not a very good reason to make such an extraordinary claim. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I'm not claiming it's good. I'm claiming there's no better.

sentience can never be proven. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Providing proofs and 'proving' are not the same thing. For clarity we could say 'evidence'.

I accept that other human beings are sentient because I'm sentient and they look and behave like I do. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Yep. That's exactly the claim Lemione is making. Thst LaMDA looks and behaves sufficiently like him. Lemione's threshold for sufficiency is obviously lower than yours. Have you any justification for your particular threshold of similarity?

Biologically, we're of the same species. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Yes. You keep repeating this claim but without any support whatsoever. On what grounds is your biological similarity key? Why not your similarity of height, or weight, or density, or number of limbs... You've not given any reason why species matters. All you've said is the because you're sentient, you presume other thing like you are too. A bookcase is like you (it's about the same height), more so thsn a baby (completely different height and build). An adult chimpanzee is arguably more like you than an neonatal human, it's more similar in size and shape.

I can never prove my fellow human beings are sentient. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Yes. We can take that as given. We can't prove the sun will rise tomorrow either. We can't prove all sorts of things. It doesn't prevent us from assessing the quality of various arguments.

Yep. That's exactly the claim Lemione is making. — Isaac

No, it isn't. He's only considering language output. I'm talking about behavior in a broader sense.

You keep repeating this claim but without any support whatsoever. On what grounds is your biological similarity key? — Isaac

I don't see a need to provide support for this. Seems like a quibble.

I'm not claiming it's good. — Isaac

Glad we agree here.



Every debate has to end somewhere. I rest my case. Good chatting. :smile:

But I can never prove my fellow human beings are sentient. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Do you have an unshakable conviction - a sense of certainty - that a human being is typing these words?

Do you have an unshakable conviction - a sense of certainty - that this human being is sentient? — ZzzoneiroCosm

I wouldn't call it an unshakable conviction or a certainty, but rather an encounter in a face-to-face relation. There was no fact to the matter that made me make this choice. It's how the situation presents itself to me, in the immediate, before I begin to actually categorize and assess and so forth.

Our moral communities don't presently work on the basis of proving who counts. It's not a matter of knowledge, technique, skill, or discipline. When we choose to treat something as if it belongs to our moral community we do so because of our relationship to it is such that we see it as having a face -- somewhere along the line Blake Lemoine -- given the story so far -- had such an encounter.

It's this encounter with others that I think our ethical reasoning comes from -- it's because, while I have my interior world, I see that my goals aren't the only ones in this encounter with others. It's not sameness that create moral communities -- that's an identity. It's that we are all immersed in our own world, and then, lo, a face breaks my individual, elemental desires.

Do you see the difference in these approaches?

I see the difference. But there's an issue with your "encounter" focus.

It seems to diminish the seriousness of the "moral community" (of organisms; of human beings) to allow a machine to enter on the basis of one man's encounter.

Maybe I (one man) have had such an encounter with my sex doll. Does my sex doll therefore gain entrance as well? Certainly not.

I think Lemoine is being given too much credit by many on this thread. He is most likely a crackpot or a con artist. He wasn't put on leave by his company and rubbished by his peers for his excellent judgement and moral sensitivities, but because he's probably an attention seeking fantasist, a liar, or otherwise unstable or deceptive. Or you believe someone who had years of experience as a computer engineer couldn't come up with the type of questions that some of us could within minutes to show up this rather pathetic mix of data search and mimic for what it is.

I wouldn't call it an unshakable conviction or a certainty, but rather an encounter in a face-to-face relation. — Moliere

Maybe you wouldn't call it that. But it is that.

We'll have a better picture of how silly or serious this debate is when they release the LaMDA chat app. I'll drop $.99 to get it to jabberwock.

Brilliant marketing scheme here if that's what it is.

Kinda done here till then. It's been fun, I've definitely learned something. About the Robot Rights movement.

It's analogical to a government scientist coming out and claiming aliens are being hidden in Area 51, getting a bunch of attention for it, embarassing his peers, and getting a book deal. Nice for him. But do we have to feed that?