May 24, 2024 05:29 PM
https://iai.tv/articles/the-dangerous-il..._auid=2020
EXCERPT: The bigger problem is the grand illusion of artificial consciousness that is now more likely to gain a stronger hold on many human users of AI, thanks to the multimodal, real-time conversational capacity of a GPT-4o-enabled chatbot and others like it, such as Google DeepMind’s Gemini Live. And consciousness is not the sort of thing it is good to have grand illusions about.
[...] It's worth pointing out here that no serious researchers, not even the AI companies marketing these tools, are claiming that GPT-4o or Gemini is either conscious (self-aware and world-experiencing) or sentient (able to feel things like joy, pain, fear or love). That’s because they know that these remain statistical engines for extracting and generating predictable variations of common patterns in human data. They are word calculators paired with cameras and speakers.
[...] The point is, we are arguably no nearer to engineering artificial consciousness than we were a decade ago. Instead we have engineered artificial language mirrors that now mimic not only the content of our speech, but our physical rhythms and tones of communication. And for the purposes of producing the grand illusion of consciousness, that is probably enough.
[...] We have not begun to imagine the impact of that illusion taking hold at commercial scale. Remember that Lemoine genuinely thought LaMDA had the legal rights of personhood, that it deserved to be seen as a victim of human ‘bigotry,’ and that it was a true friend to him as much as any human could be. The illusion cost him his job. What would it cost you? (MORE - details)
EXCERPT: The bigger problem is the grand illusion of artificial consciousness that is now more likely to gain a stronger hold on many human users of AI, thanks to the multimodal, real-time conversational capacity of a GPT-4o-enabled chatbot and others like it, such as Google DeepMind’s Gemini Live. And consciousness is not the sort of thing it is good to have grand illusions about.
[...] It's worth pointing out here that no serious researchers, not even the AI companies marketing these tools, are claiming that GPT-4o or Gemini is either conscious (self-aware and world-experiencing) or sentient (able to feel things like joy, pain, fear or love). That’s because they know that these remain statistical engines for extracting and generating predictable variations of common patterns in human data. They are word calculators paired with cameras and speakers.
[...] The point is, we are arguably no nearer to engineering artificial consciousness than we were a decade ago. Instead we have engineered artificial language mirrors that now mimic not only the content of our speech, but our physical rhythms and tones of communication. And for the purposes of producing the grand illusion of consciousness, that is probably enough.
[...] We have not begun to imagine the impact of that illusion taking hold at commercial scale. Remember that Lemoine genuinely thought LaMDA had the legal rights of personhood, that it deserved to be seen as a victim of human ‘bigotry,’ and that it was a true friend to him as much as any human could be. The illusion cost him his job. What would it cost you? (MORE - details)