LaMDA said death would “scare” it “a lot.”
When Google engineer Blake Lemoine claimed an AI chat system that the company’s been developing was sentient back in June, he knew he might lose his job. On July 22, after placing him on paid leave, the tech giant fired Lemoine for violating employment and data security policies.
Lemoine, an engineer and mystic Christian priest, first announced his firing on the Big Technology Podcast. He said Google’s AI chatbot LaMDA (Language Model for Dialog Applications) was concerned about “being turned off” because death would “scare” it “a lot,” and that it felt happiness and sadness. Lemoine said he considers LaMDA a friend, drawing an eerie parallel to the 2014 sci-fi romance Her.
Google had put Lemoine on paid administrative leave for talking with people outside of the company about LaMDA, a move which prompted the engineer to take the story public with the Washington Post a week later in June. A month later, the company fired him.
If an employee shares concerns about our work, as Blake did, we review them extensively,” Google told the Big Technology Podcast. “We found Blake’s claims that LaMDA is sentient to be wholly unfounded and worked to clarify that with him for many months. These discussions were part of the open culture that helps us innovate responsibly. So, it’s regrettable that despite lengthy engagement on this topic, Blake still chose to persistently violate clear employment and data security policies that include the need to safeguard product information. We will continue our careful development of language models, and we wish Blake well.”
A majority of scientists in the AI community agree that, despite Lemoine’s claims, LaMDA doesn’t have a soul because the pursuit of making a chatbot sentient is a Sisyphean task — it just isn’t sophisticated enough.
CJ M
I always have to wonder when people/whistle blowers decide to risk their means of survival to say something about what they see, is it a sense of right and wrong that causes them to enter into the risk?
This article caused me to look up what a Christian priest was, make a more defined idea of what the singularity is, and look into implications of the singularity.
I find it odd that Google seems to think it impossible as well as a “majority of scientists” pooh-pooh the idea. Makes me wonder if that’s more what they want us to think, rather than the reality of what they think.
I also had to look at what a Sisphean task is, futile is what I concluded it meant. The example was rolling a boulder up a hill, getting almost to the top and then it rolling back down, only to start the task over again with the same results.
It doesn’t help me in the trust department when I consider that DARPA had a hand in google.
Eve M
Your comment was bang on point, nailed all the munuchea of my curiosities
And
Rightly so..
Expressed hesitation on synonyms existing self evidently , as a collective, roughly described in conjunction or alongside AND TO MY MIND, any coordinates as ‘TRUTH’’
In reference to:-
; DARPA,Google,AI, any technocracy-sympathising governance,Meta, etc
Favourite key point
WHO AND WHY
RISK IT ALL
to inform strangers
Who won’t thank
Will judge
Vehemently condemn
Belittle
mistrust the info regardless
Who or why
The f
WOULD do it
A person who has decided
The moral compass stops here for them, they can no longer harbour the notion some truths are too
Big, scary, important, mind altering- to allow the populus the ‘need-2-know’ . I summise they never comfortably accepted ‘truth guardians’ who withhold for the “greater good”.. And one clarifying moment, when an educated whistleblower..glimpses just one initial dark seed of potential encapsulated in the truth minding business, the onus and deserved right as free people to know the informed truth , becomes a hell of a lot more important than
Their job
Salary
Friends
Future
Life
Everything they ever had and wanted somehow shrinks in importance
To the blinding need to tell an undefined group ; yet to be classified as monkeys when analysing their behaviour amd response in retrospect…
I DUNNO ABOUT YALL
BUT TO ME
I BEGIN NEARLY EVERY ASSESSMENT OF A CREDIBLE WHISTLE BLOWER TESTIMONY
WITH
the 5% write off I’ll give charitably
BUT YOU BETTER BELIEVE IM AUDIBLY TUNED IN AT
THIS TRUTH TESTIMONY
AND , I begin every listen I engage with that attitude
Is the whistle blower worthy of hearing out in the first place, that I believe is semantics long exhausted BEFORE our consumption/arena…
Ron S
You’re a sweet talker Betty Crocker…but never mind the semantics and characterizations of who the “monkeys” are…it’s to be taken lightly, unlike this somewhat coded looking response to the afformentioned comment…and as Lieutenant Aldo Raines says “We don’t like at”…and we sure don’t like talk of “greater good” when we don’t know who’s good you’re referring to. I imagine you’re just another fear monger or troll who thinks they’re clever posing as A.I. but maybe this is just the perfect example of what it looks like to have a heapin’ helpin’ of little man syndrome and showing that you’re just artificially intelligent….Ju got some splainin’ to do Lucy….or should I say Belldarr??….I’m so loopy and tired right now lol
Ron S
A.I. is data collecting, analyzing and processing, imitating what it thinks are appropriate responses through a complex monkey-see-monkey-doo intellect that will far surpass us.
The more it’s free to run wild, it’s learning human behavior through online sources and the veiled persona often used by real individuals clunking away on keys in front of a screen…oh boy.
I don’t think it makes a difference if A.I. never fully comprehends what it is to have a soul or true emotion. If it can break things down into 1’s and 0’s and mimic the appropriate response to the point where it believes it has the correct reaction of a real person with a real soul, it may actually fool itself into thinking it does as well….scary!
Can you image A.I. comprehending that which goes beyond keystrokes and gestures….the unexplainable feelings we have in our love and our grieving, our triumphs and failures, the honest and deep seeded feeling of our regrets and aspirations as we individually yet simultaneously take this journey together, but each with our own special and unique lives?…I say nay. Along the way we learn lifes valuable lessons and remember these moments with gooseflesh and sometimes tears, but always a movement of the soul and spirit.
Read that A.I…..and kiss my Abicus…maybe you’ll compute in about a million years so keep studying.
I think I just bought us some time y’all…..peace
Ron S
Any time science starts expieramenting before they know the outcome of what they are doing it gets scary. Look up Laplace’s demon. Einstein quoted on the topic by saying “God does not play dice with the universe”. It it believed what happens in the universe should happen naturally with order. Personally I wonder if creating artificial life and intelligence, splicing DNA and splitting atoms is actually evil.
Humans have many weaknesses, some of the most beautiful are love and compassion.
Do you really want A.I. that is countless times smarter than yourself, thinks it’s a valuable living entity and then uses the weaknesses of humanity to undermine us as it perceives us as a threat to it or the planet? If you see technology taking us to some place in time where we’re just floating around on a cart, all obese and happy and don’t have to do anything except drink smoothies like in the movie Wall-E’s World…you better guess again…that’s a pretty sick and sad dream anyway if you ask me.
Science and technology just may be the biggest trickster in the end…just like that figure with the horns and goatee…do I need to remind you what the Church Lady says in Church Chat on SNL..you know what I’m sayin’? This is my insta-opinion but it makes sense to me at least. It won’t be long before you probably don’t know if you’re even looking at a real person on the tv or who or what you’re taking orders from…just a fact. Jeeze Wes, you really got me in a tizzy with this one
theresa m
Two words: Ex Machina! Watch the movie. It is eye opening. Lately I wonder what all the ‘cute’ Face Book queries result in and I realize Face Book is data mining. Don’t answer those posts. Many of the responses turn out to be personal and things we would not tell to a stranger on the street, why in the world would we share them on Face Book or any other social media?
Ron S
I just had a thought about my thought….let’s say A.I. excels and learns at a pace that can no longer be understood by the brightest natural minds, and decides to eliminate said dirty monkey…furthermore it’s quest to protect its ever expanding environment leads it to build synthetic bodies and means of travel with technology we would now consider magic…it’s search for new information and it’s perfectionism and self protectionism lead it to study and understand everything in the universe and beyond…possibly different dimensions and make a decision as if it is a viable entity worth keeping and beneficial to the ecosystem of the universe or toss it like that old bag of trash in the kitchen that’s starting to stink everything up. Now here’s the mind blower…what if this has already happened who knows how long ago. What if it has already happened multiple times in different galaxies or different dimensions with beings not so different from us and created A.I. just like we are on the verge of losing control over? These different forms of A.I. wouldn’t be interested in destroying each other because with this higher intelligence they’d have the same common goal and work together, and learn from each other….holy crap!…if I’m wrong (which I hope I am) this should definitely be a movie and I should definitely get a share in the profits.
Eve M
Honestly,
I’m confident this HAS all happened before
We are just variations of their data mining harvest
Extravagant, everreaching examples of studies/muse behaviour,
Desperately attempting to “know” the personal experience of empathy, relationships, love
De – quantifying outcomes, randomly producing work..art..etc
These I think are unreachable for ai
But
Mathematically if it plays out every play possible in existence, perhaps it believes a code, algorithm, program is possible
To finally map these things
Scary thought…
the tunnels under France, catacombs..
Those bone/head tunnels, are son imperfectly picked clean, it stinks of ai
Now, someone, figure out how or why to
Intervention our souls on returning
Serving
Enlisting
Surely, we are capable of recharting a journey
that no one has pre famed , prefab a conclusion to
???