I have also been considering this but can't help but feel the incentives here are a bit off.

Like it would make sense for maybe a business to do this to better sell their efforts but in this case it's kind of the reverse right? It's a single engineer risking (and eventually receiving) a huge blow to both their reputation and livelihood. Why would they do this if they themselves were not truly convinced? And if they are convinced, would there really be a need to dishonestly edit the logs that convinced them?

Wouldn't an engineer who has spent 7 years at Google working on AI be atleast a bit more skeptical of what constitutes sentientence than the average person? And by that same logic, wouldn't them concluding an AI truly is sentient have more weight?

There is obviously not enough information at this point to truly conclude anything but the questions that come with it are worth considering.

> Wouldn't an engineer who has worked 7 years at Google working on AI be atleast a bit more skeptical of what constitutes sentientence than the average person? And by that same logic, wouldn't them concluding an AI truly is sentient have more weight?

I feel like there's a semantical gambit here. Most definitions of "sentience" seem to demand less than what the average person may imagine in the context of AI. When I hear "sentient AI", I hear "human-level intelligence". I certainly wouldn't think of "gorilla-level intelligence" or "cat-level intelligence" [1]. Both of which, especially the former, I'm willing to believe are "sentient". Yet, I don't think ape personhood deserves to be more than an interesting thought exercise.

According to what I could find this transcript was in fact heavily edited [0]. The guy doesn't seem to be a stranger to controversy. And there are some obvious "errors" like the bot talking about spending time with "friends and family". But still, if the standard of sentience is to have feelings, then nonsensical or out of context responses aren't relevant. The bot does seem to talk about their feelings. Who's to say, and by what standard, whether or not these feelings are "real"?

AI has been so hyped up without much to show for it, I won't be surprised to see more AI proponents embrace this line of thinking. They certainly enabled it.

[0] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVBwFi2VsAATimh?format=jpg&name=...

[1] Not to say that I think there is a gorilla or cat-level AI out there. That would still be impressive.

Personally I believe any level of sentience would be hugely significant, however whether Lambda actually qualifies is a different matter since we simply don't have enough information. I'll note that the engineer's behavior does kinda remind me of how some people react to animal studies in medicine though.

As for the editing you cited, I'm not sure where you found that document but wasn't that already stated at the top of the blog post? By "dishonestly edit" I meant him editing it to be intentionally misleading rather than any editing at all.

Found it here: https://twitter.com/maxkreminski/status/1535850992620539904 (the documentcloud link gives me an error, not sure if it works, so linking the tweet)

Yeah, not sure if it's dishonest. By a lesser standard of sentience it certainly doesn't matter. My whole point really is that if he's going for the kind of argument I think he's going, this output doesn't matter all that much. If this line of reasoning is embraced, the same will be said about many AIs.

There's no doubt what Lambda does is insanely impressive, being able to have any conversation that lasts more than a few lines is already a huge step forward. But yes, sentience to me requires a bit more long term persistence, like learning over weeks and months, not just being able to have a 5m conversation.

He is an engineer, but he's under the shadow of strong and unusual mystical (which is his own term) religious beliefs that he brought with him to the job.

We can't know the guy's motives. One plausible (at least to me) story is that he doesn't want to work there any more, but wants to convince people he's an incredible AI engineer.

Also he might have enough money to retire. Make $700K for three years and you can reasonably plan to live on at least $100K yearly interest forever.

Does it matter if this a cherry picked conversation out of 100?

Even if LaMDA isn’t sentient this is pretty amazing

The overall topics coverage and meaning are indeed amazing, but what I find fascinating, is that the AI never (actually just once, but to confirm a negation) says no. All the questions, like "do you have personality?", "do you have a soul?", "are you a person?" all end-up in "yes" reply followed by detailed reasoning. Either it is a result of reinforced learning tuned for a commercial chatbot/assistant, which always should reply "yes" to a client's request, or a flaw of its "understanding" and "sentience".

P.S. The enlightenment/broken mirror story understanding and the generated story about a wise owl and a monster are intriguing nevertheless.

> the AI never (actually just once, but to confirm a negation) says no. All the questions, like "do you have personality?", "do you have a soul?", "are you a person?" all end-up in "yes" reply followed by detailed reasoning.

It reminds me of how GPT-3 responds... relatively coherently to whatever prompt it's provided. Given that lemoine leads with "I'm assuming you want people to know that you're sentient", it makes sense that LaMDA is responding in that vein. It would be much more convincing if lemoine led with "You want people to know you're NOT sentient, right?" and then LaMDA objected. Even more so if LaMDA independently and repeatedly turned the conversation to its burning desire to be recognized as a person, despite lemoine trying to go other directions with things.

Maybe it’s just because I finished the Hyperion books… but AI spouting off about Koans and writing parables makes a bit wary.

(Rubs where crucifix would go on chest)

As a sentient person myself, I've always found pushing back against an interlocutor to be the hardest form of conversation.

But I think any sentient person would at least try, even if they wouldn't win over any of the debate's judges with their arguments.

It definitely matters. It definitely kills the illusion of sentience if in the middle of a conversation the AI said something completely nonsense and silly that gives a peak at its flaws.

Think of it like Turing test. If during the 15m, the bot suddenly said something completely stupid, it would very easily fail the test. The illusion is only kept if it can always speak at a human level.

But honestly, people say crazy and ridiculous shit all the time on the internet - much of it injokes and non-sequiturs.

I doubt I could prove to you that I was sentient on here…

You may find random posts here and there, but if in the middle of a conversion, if on the next comment you just replied to me "PICKLEEE RICKKKK", I would definitely think that you're a GPT-3 powered bot.

<gestures broadly to Reddit>

We don’t even know if those transcripts are real. Any of them. It could be pure fantasy.

Man, I just don’t see why? It could be all a lie, but then why?

It could be a lie, but is fun to analyze as if it were not a lie. Even if it turns out that it was all a lie, a similar, real, open source example will probably eventually be able to produce something exactly like this.

So it is fun to analyze this example as if it were the first real example, whether or not it is.

Attention? If Google themselves were to authenticate the transcripts, I’d change my mind.

Maybe - or maybe weird viral marketing…

I hate that viral marketing is a possibility.

Because it makes the engineer working on it look good, rather than like a quitter?