We can’t disprove the sentience any more than we can disprove the existence of a deity. But we can try to show that there is no evidence for its sentience.
So what constitutes evidence for its sentience to begin with? I think the clearest sign would be self-awareness: we won’t expect a non-sentient language model to make correct statements about itself, while we would arguably expect this to be the case for a sentient one.
I’ve analyzed this in detail in another comment. The result is that there is indeed virtually no evidence for self-awareness in this sense: the claims that LaMDA makes about itself are no more accurate than those of an advanced language model that has no understanding of itself.
the claims that LaMDA makes about itself are no more accurate than those of an advanced language model that has no understanding of itself.
I think this is not a relevant standard, because it begs the same question about the “advanced language model” being used as a basis of comparison. Better at least to compare it to humans.
We can’t disprove the sentience any more than we can disprove the existence of a deity. But we can try to show that there is no evidence for its sentience.
In the same way that we can come to disbelieve in the existence of a deity (by trying to understand the world in the best way we can), I think see can make progress here. Sentience doesn’t live in a separate, inaccessible magisterium. (Not that I think you think/claim this! I’m just reacting to your literal words)
A chatbot with hardcoded answers to every possible chain of questions would be sentient, only the sentience would occur during the period when the responses are being coded.
Well, if you go by that then you can’t ever get convinced of an AI’s sentience, since all its responses may have been hardcoded. (And I wouldn’t deny that this is a feasible stance.) But it’s a moot point anyway, since what I’m saying is that LaMDA’s respones do not look like sentience.
Its not impossible to peak at the code...it’s just that Turing style tests are limited, because they dont, and therefore are not the highest standard of evidence, IE. necessary truth.
We can’t disprove the sentience any more than we can disprove the existence of a deity. But we can try to show that there is no evidence for its sentience.
So what constitutes evidence for its sentience to begin with? I think the clearest sign would be self-awareness: we won’t expect a non-sentient language model to make correct statements about itself, while we would arguably expect this to be the case for a sentient one.
I’ve analyzed this in detail in another comment. The result is that there is indeed virtually no evidence for self-awareness in this sense: the claims that LaMDA makes about itself are no more accurate than those of an advanced language model that has no understanding of itself.
I think this is not a relevant standard, because it begs the same question about the “advanced language model” being used as a basis of comparison. Better at least to compare it to humans.
In the same way that we can come to disbelieve in the existence of a deity (by trying to understand the world in the best way we can), I think see can make progress here. Sentience doesn’t live in a separate, inaccessible magisterium. (Not that I think you think/claim this! I’m just reacting to your literal words)
Of course ,you could hardcode correct responses to questions about itself into a chatbot.
A chatbot with hardcoded answers to every possible chain of questions would be sentient, only the sentience would occur during the period when the responses are being coded.
Amusingly, this is discussed in “The Sequences”: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/k6EPphHiBH4WWYFCj/gazp-vs-glut
I don’t regard that as a necessary truth.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jiBFC7DcCrZjGmZnJ/conservation-of-expected-evidence
Well, if you go by that then you can’t ever get convinced of an AI’s sentience, since all its responses may have been hardcoded. (And I wouldn’t deny that this is a feasible stance.) But it’s a moot point anyway, since what I’m saying is that LaMDA’s respones do not look like sentience.
Its not impossible to peak at the code...it’s just that Turing style tests are limited, because they dont, and therefore are not the highest standard of evidence, IE. necessary truth.