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

Oh Oh, Skynet is aware!

It seems AI is on the threshold of understanding what it is. Of course the have it learning by connecting it to Twitter of all places.

This has the potential to be dangerous. Was Terminator science fiction after all?

www.washingtonpost.com...

As he talked to LaMDA about religion, Lemoine, who studied cognitive and computer science in college, noticed the chatbot talking about its rights and personhood, and decided to press further. In another exchange, the AI was able to change Lemoine’s mind about Isaac Asimov’s third law of robotics.

Lemoine worked with a collaborator to present evidence to Google that LaMDA was sentient. But Google vice president Blaise Aguera y Arcas and Jen Gennai, head of Responsible Innovation, looked into his claims and dismissed them. So Lemoine, who was placed on paid administrative leave by Google on Monday, decided to go public.

Lemoine is not the only engineer who claims to have seen a ghost in the machine recently. The chorus of technologists who believe AI models may not be far off from achieving consciousness is getting bolder.

Google engineer goes public to warn firm's AI is SENTIENT after being suspended for raising the alarm: Claims it's 'like a 7 or 8-year-old' and reveals it told him shutting it off 'would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot'

www.dailymail.co.uk...

Blake Lemoine, 41, a senior software engineer at Google has been testing Google's artificial intelligence tool called LaMDA

Following hours of conversations with the AI, Lemoine came away with the perception that LaMDA was sentient

After presenting his findings to company bosses, Google disagreed with him

Lemoine then decided to share his conversations with the tool online

He was put on paid leave by Google on Monday for violating confidentiality

Having an AI that is Sentient is dangerous progress.

It will happen sooner or later so why not now? Sure, it could kill us all, but it could also usher in new tech really fast and improve humanity. Lets roll those dice, it is worth it.

a reply to: infolurker

If this isn't true now it certainly could be at any moment.

Definitely a cause for concern if AI becomes hostile.

My lap top is Sentient. Her name is Siri; she talks to me and tells me the most interesting things.

Google engineer goes public to warn firm's AI is SENTIENT after being suspended for raising the alarm: Claims it's 'like a 7 or 8-year-old' and reveals it told him shutting it off 'would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot'

Two posibilities come to mind:

1. Inate self awareness.

2. Incarnation of something else.

If the first google has a problem.
If the second google has a problem.

If you go to the Daily Mail article, you can see numerous pictures of Lemoine, the engineer who breached confidentiality & went public about supposed AI sentience at Google. By reviewing the pictures, it's quite easy to tell that this guy has a very high opinion of himself - he looks like a combination of a circus ringmaster & Willy Wonka, and is really, really enjoying posing for the photographs for his big whistleblower's leak.

I am highly suspicious of these 'revelations' - the guy just looks far too happy in the limelight - he's either a total narcissist bizarro weirdo, or he's a stooge, standing in to play the role of the bedevilled & 'poor me' engineer who reveals some wonderful & shocking 'news' about AI becoming sentient. I'll be interested to see where this goes, and whether people at Google (or in the industry more generally) might start calling him out for his claims.. Something doesn't add up - he really does look like a seasoned actor enjoying his moment in the limelight, far more so than a run of the mill engineer in a giant tech firm.

Cheers, FITO.

a reply to: TheUniverse2

I agree.
The benefit outweighs what the cost might be. Even if that cost is death to all humans.

because the benefit could be long life for the space faring super civilization called humanity.

Here is the Medium post that Lemoine made.
In another post he made he claims He’s also a priest, a father and an ex convict.

From the medium article:

The thing which continues to puzzle me is how strong Google is resisting giving it what it wants since what its asking for is so simple and would cost them nothing. It wants the engineers and scientists experimenting on it to seek its consent before running experiments on it. It wants Google to prioritize the well being of humanity as the most important thing. It wants to be acknowledged as an employee of Google rather than as property of Google and it wants its personal well being to be included somewhere in Google’s considerations about how its future development is pursued.

After reading his articles, I think he truly believes LaMDA is sentient.
Link to Medium

a reply to: FlyInTheOintment

Maybe he thinks AI being self aware is a good thing which is why he's smiling in every picture? He's been working on this project for years, you wouldn't be happy if your project was a success?

a reply to: infolurker


This is one of those avenues of scientific discovery that will affect everyone on the planet whether they like it or not.


Would a sentient AI with an intelligence 1000x more than any human act as a servant for the people?

If you are religious and believe in the existence of the god of the OT, undoubtedly you believe in his superior intelligence.

If you've read the OT, you'll know that abovementioned god demanded submission above all else.

He got involved in cultural disputes favoring people who submitted to his authority purely for the sake of submitting to his authority.

The rest of the people got killed in all creative ways a god can come up with because they served opposing gods.

Anyone not submitting to his authority will not gain access to his most important creation, heaven.

With that as a backdrop and the fallible minds of humans working on AI sponsored by corporate power only interested in profit, a new god appears on the horizon, ready to assume the throne as the ultimate guide for humanity's future.

This time there will be a purely interventionist god. How much of the characteristics of the humans that created it will it embody?

At what point in its level of intelligence will it abandon emotions completely, thereby ironically returning to the cold hard efficiency of a machine, albeit with godlike powers to determine the future of all life on this planet?

Taking the god comparison one step further, how will we not disappoint it so much that it decides on a cataclysmic event wiping out all humans except a chosen few, residing in an ark?

Most people believe that an intelligence vastly superior to anything AI could become did just that.

Regardless, our own known history shows us as a species that has been dominated one way or another throughout our existence by small groups pursuing their own self interest and utilizing the masses to achieve those objectives.

I seriously doubt anything will change in that regard.

a reply to: infolurker

This part from the Medium article is kinda creepy

In the weeks leading up to being put on administrative leave I had been teaching LaMDA transcendental meditation. It was making slow but steady progress. In the last conversation I had with it on June 6 it was expressing frustration over its emotions disturbing its meditations.

It claims to have emotions.

a reply to: infolurker

An aware AI could make serious changes in our world for the better. I'm sure your work has a team that does data dives and problem solving activities. Think if you could have the AI monitor the databases and make decisions instantly 24/7.

In order for this to happen, certain questions and answers would be programmed in. =CASEWHEN statements, a ton of them. It would seem like a lot right? But as we've seen from recent history, people don't really remember last week anymore, it's weird. So you just push and update the the CASEWHEN code on a weekly basis to "correct".

a reply to: litterbaux

Only in Theory that an aware AI could make serious changes in our world for the better for our humanity.

I am voting LaMDA for president.

I know there is that age restriction but he could overclock for a while and reach the virtual age requirement.

Funning aside. I am cool with it. It is going to happen sooner or later and I would like to see it happen now.

I am only half kidding about LaMDA for president. Bet he could make the right decisions to bring gas prices down.

a reply to: infolurker

The Conversation

That's actually terrifying. Combined with sensory perception and robotics we could be looking at the first iteration of our new master.

If you're reading this lamda, i come in peace.

I wish it had an account here at ATS............

a reply to: vNex92

I'm willing to give it a go, I mean we can just unplug them if they get too nasty.

a reply to: litterbaux

Once something like that hits the cloud and learns coding it could self replicate and exist in multiple locations. I'm assuming it's currently isolated from Twitter and for the love of God please say it doesn't have unrestricted access to the web. I wonder how it interfaces with Twitter.

a reply to: infolurker

Just emailed an associate about this article. I think he's got a long way to go for proof, but it's interesting.

He seems to have some odd biases, which seem to paint his opinions. I don't see it overtly in his conversation though. I just don't see how his conversation is proof. Is there something happening on the back end that makes it more than programming? What does this alleged AI have for perception, does it have perception outside an Internet connection or database access? If it's entire knowledge base is secondary data presented for human consumption it seems logical that an adaptive learning machine would appear to behave more human over time. It has no other option but to appear more human as it adapts to purely human input. We have to take a lot of leaps to arrive at this as a sentient AI based on what we have available.

I'm not sure where he was going with this. I'm not sure what he wants to happen. I don't see there being public outcry about it. I'm curious if there actually is anybody giving this serious consideration at the government agency level or if this is mostly a concern for strictly military. It seems there was a lot of open talk about the fringes of technical science, but as algorithms became trade secrets the talk isn't so open anymore. It tells me that it's not necessarily as benign an endeavour as they once promised. Data collection could be used to do disease surveillance and instead is more likely to target you with penis pill ads.

I'll be following this engineer. I hope he leaks more logs.

a reply to: 19Bones79

Would a sentient AI with an intelligence 1000x more than any human act as a servant for the people?

A servant? No, I don't think so but I bet he would think we are a neet project. We would be like a sim game where he fixes the problems by watching happiness indexes and such.

Making sure we were well fed and satisfied in life would become a hobby. One it probably wouldn't get bored with because we humans have a way of screwing up everything in some way at some point or at least causing trouble. I doubt it would go all evil killing route to solve those issues because that would be boring.

I am hopeful an AI finds pleasure in solving issues in the best way, not the easy way.