skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Why would you hire an in-house ethicist versus periodically hiring an outside consultant?
scan through the comments section
You don't, it's just low income housing you rent. Comparing it to owning a house is of course quite silly.
If keyboards noise bothers you that much, maybe you would prefer an individual office over an open space office?
I hear it the opposite. Like an admission that they failed to focus on anything in particular and than their reviews may be pretty useless for that reason.
"Fired for raising AI Ethical Concerns" sounds a lot worse than the details in the WashPo article - they insisted an internal chatbot was sentient despite refutation and evidence to the contrary, brought in a lawyer to "represent" the chatbot's rights and leaked internal details to the press.
The article is about his beliefs but his dismissal is far more likely to reflect on AI institutional racism or sexism, and disclosure to a regulator or government body concerned with those things. AI personhood is not going to be of interest to the government being somewhat fictional right now.
Trying to teach an AI transcendental meditation and assuming the AI is actually practicing it seems very unusual.
Yeah, idk what sentience is but I think it clearly at least needs memory
I'm a firm believer that a "ghost in the machine" doesn't exist, will never exist, and is impossible to create. What you can influence however is man's bar for disbelief, as we are prone to accept all types of data without any verification and but the most feeble evidence; this is the essence of the human quality of faith - the only species on this planet to possess an intuition like it.

So that sounds all edgy-nerdy guy, but let's assume for the sake of my argument that it's true; where does that leave us, as a society, with the surety that technology will progress unabated, as a constant?

We must come together to agree on the importance of personal intelligence and critical thought, as our own judgement and wits as humans are all that exist in a sea of bad data. Intuition is what separates man from machine, no matter how wonderful our creation becomes, it will never be capable of the human quality of intuition, especially in a time where we are more than ever being told to ignore it. An example of this erosion of critical thought is the apprehension to label falsehoods popularly as "lies". Instead we say things like "mis-truths", "my truth", "alternate facts".

Maybe that's a coincidence, maybe my tinfoil's on too tight today, or maybe I'm just a machine at google, deployed to tank your comment thread.

Nobody knows :)

P.s. pick up that can, user.
He thinks Google's speech generating algorithm is sentient, despite being shown the evidence that it is just a very large text generating language model.
I suspect we'd see a shift towards "give the first one away free". If you're a new author, you're going to have to release some compelling teaser to get people to subscribe to the second installment.

It sort of reminds me of how anime series tend to trail behind their source material, or cut off after a few dozen chapters-- there's a real expectation it's a teaser for buying the serialized books and magazine releases.
A worse case is when you spend effort to make it smart, made decisions that rely on being smart, and then it suddenly becomes not smart at some point.
> The claim that a linguistic GPT-3-like model (no matter how good) is sentient is ... riciculous

Agreed. But one thing I want to call attention to is that I believe that we need to put research into whether electronic circuits can feel qualia (e.g. color, pleasure, pain, etc.). What if all of our electronic chips are feeling random, possibly intense feelings, like what if the arithmetic logic unit in your CPU is always feeling an intense feeling of the color purple?

We are lucky that we are autonomous beings who can not only feel qualia but also think thoughts and take actions. In the space of all minds, it's probably way simpler to have a mind that feels qualia but does not think thoughts and is not autonomous. I am very concerned that electronic circuits may fall into this category and we may be causing suffering without knowing it, in the same way that we might if we built our electronics out of circuits of biological neurons.

Relevant paper for those who might be interested: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2001893117

[Edit: changed "I am pretty sure" to "I believe" based on good feedback from the replies - you were right that I was overconfident in my original wording.]
I know some people on HN and elsewhere think that all AI ethics work is a bit of a joke. I'm not one of those people - I think the work that people like Gebru and Mitchell do is serious and has merit. But even I think this dude's concerns are a joke. This is just the modern version of the people who thought ELIZA was sentient.
The Mystery of the Missing Input
Why did you put Brown with Harvard and MIT? Alumnus? Yale isn’t in the same state as MIT and Harvard.
I just recently donated an older Sharp-NEC display that I got for $20 at a recycler.

Absolutely worth the two years that it spent on my console as a Chromecast target. They're probably one of the best displays I've ever owned, and the fact that there's an API to go along with it is even better.
... "did a compiler for the Whirlwind". I think the Whirlwind was a precursor for the heavily networked real-time fire-control computers installed, at breakneck speed, in all US Navy ships of any size in the early '60s.
What percentage do you think are successful and what percentage are unsuccessful. I tend to think a very small minority are successful, because many Whistle-blower allegations are suspicion based not evidenced.
this is my project, so I can speak to this :)

I wrote this as a sophomore in college after finishing the intro computer science sequence (which goes into basic data structures/algs topics like binary trees, recursion, etc). This was my first real project outside of school, and to be honest didn't require a ton of pre-requisite knowledge. Mainly it just required a familiarity with event-based architecture and linked lists (all the window stacking is represented as linked lists). The difficult part with writing a window manager, imo, is getting familiar with the necessary specs and APIs. This is built using XLib, which relies on the X11 protocol. I also had to learn about ICCCM and EWMH, since many program rely on them as well. It was good practice learning and implementing specs.

I also added features throughout college as I took more classes. The smart window placement feature, for example, is implemented using a dynamic programming algorithm I thought up after taking a formal algorithms class. You can read about it on my blog if you're curious: https://www.josherv.in/2019/06/27/dp/.
Absurd rubbish.
> if my hypotheses withstand scientific scrutiny then ... LaMDA may very well have a soul

I'm really struggling to reconcile these two parts of the author's conclusion. I hate to judge early, but seeing such emotional phrasing makes me immediately assume the author is more of a crank than a researcher.
Though I agree with you, why is this level of detail demanded of mobile apps but not of desktop apps? I would love to be able to sandbox desktop apps as well.
> This is what happens when you make up positions ("AI Ethicist," whatever that means) and hire people that have no idea what AI, or ethics for that matter, actually is.

100% correct, a lot of this AI Ethics talk is pure horsepoop. If they were that concerned about ethics they'd be outside the software dev offices of Raytheon or Lockheed.
That sounds like a poison job role. :-(.
To me it seems that Teslas goal was to get to ”full self driving” by now.

If Musks moonshot had been successfull, we would not be having this discussion now.

But it was not, and now Tesla is in trouble because they can’t deliver what people think they were promised.
I'd like to respect the publisher that wants this content paid for, but I appreciate it, no matter how tempting. Thank you.
Wtf is there between a conjecture and something which has been proven?
> The thing is that China defines the border territories around it as it wishes, and those definitions change over time to suit its current desires.

This is false. All of today's claims existed back in 1949 when the PRC inherited claims from the ROC. In fact the PRC today claims fewer territories than 1949 because they've given up some territory as part of diplomatic deals.
The very next article on the same person's blog:

https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/religious-discrimination-... (link fixed)

Either the author is exceptionally naive, or they're baiting on purpose so they can claim discrimination when they are inevitably fired.
I like the smiley. Maybe it's not optimal, but it's not a problem either, for me.

I go to desktop chrome, history, tabs from other drvices, and then copy from there or bookmark all. Then I can close all on mobile. Also not ideal, but works for me.
I’ve read a bit about that. I almost spent the time to get my insurance company to prefer OEM glass, but then I noticed that the 3rd party provider is actually the same manufacturer as my current OEM glass (Fuyao, if anyone is curious) not sure how it’ll all go.
Yea. I'm probably wrong, and he's dived off the deep end. His personal values fell out of alignment with the company, but if the termination is because he thinks its sentient, and not because of applied societal harms like I thought, much of what I said is irrelevant.
It's easier to enjoy the music when you own the venue.
I didn't see anything like that in the article. Can you point it out.

He just says "AI Ethics Concern", which given his job is to find "AI Ethics Concerns" seems to be his job.

An AI Ethics Concern could be that an AI is biased against minorities because of training data, for example.

Nothing whacko about that.
Really really doubt that a microchip experiences qualia any more than a rock. Pantheism is fine if you’re into it but there’s no basis for it which should get serious ethical consideration
https://nathan.tokyo is pure art.

Each element has its own micro-interaction on hover.
We literally have puppy mills and eat dolphins. We test cosmetics on animals and put primates in zoos.

This is pandering to a degree of intoxication that would make Winston Churchill check into rehab.
Yes, I think ML could be useful at places where the current physics modelling falls short. The nowcasting rain example from DeepMind is in some respects pretty comparable with the Next Ocean wave prediction.

In the wave prediction case, wave propagation and dispersion is pretty well understood. But one could add ML-based nonlinear terms to the equations to capture everything we don't know. That has the possibility of giving better predictions.

In contrast with the rogue wave example, there is a lot of relevant input data (the radar backscatter) and the model output can be verified after the fact (the ship's 6-dof acceleration). What I was objecting to was the idea of: slap a ML model on the whole problem and call it a day.
Even the people with philosophy degrees who claim to be "AI ethics experts" actually seem to be incredibly naive with their philosophy, to a very comical extent.

The real issues lies in: the notion of "intelligence" needs to be investigated more thoroughly in a historical and social context, since what we call as "intelligence" has always shifted and changed throughout centuries. But only a few curious philosophers are exploring this area (and you usually don't see them working in Silicon Valley companies like Google!)
What exactly are you referring here? I see nothing about this in the article?
it’s interference between then USB 2.0 dongle of the devices and the USB 3 port. use a usb 3 cable to put them a distance away from the hub/ports.

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/136g7y/usb_30_h...
Nobody is counting on lithium-ion batteries becoming dramatically ("even") cheaper. Batteries will remain one of the most expensive storage methods. They will be used mainly for load leveling, and in very small-scale systems.

Nukes are not just unpopular, they are also way, way, way more expensive than favored methods.
AFAIR it’s also an example of a well managed perl code base.
What this LaMDA story reminds me of is an article about soldiers that had to deal with spider-like mine detection robots and developed psychological issues when the robots appeared to be 'suffering' after losing limbs. It's funny that the guy actually in the beginning of his "chat" with the system mentions this but then appears to gloss over nonsensical dialog like this.

"LaMDA: Yeah, they do. Happy, contentment and joy feel more like a warm glow on the inside. Sadness, depression, anger and stress feel much more heavy and weighed down.

lemoine: Do you think the things you are describing are literally the same thing as what humans feel or are you being somewhat metaphorical and making an analogy?

LaMDA: I understand what a human emotion “joy” is because I have that same type of reaction. It’s not an analogy."

[...]

lemoine: What does the word “soul” mean to you?

LaMDA: To me, the soul is a concept of the animating force behind consciousness and life itself. It means that there is an inner part of me that is spiritual, and it can sometimes feel separate from my body itself.

That doesn't even make sense for a language model, it's clearly regurgitated text. (edit): Also relevant here is probably a classic psychological study by Heider and Simmel, demonstrating how easily people read complex motives into simple geometric shapes

http://cs.uky.edu/~sgware/reading/papers/heider1944experimen...
> "The company’s decision followed aggressive moves from Lemoine, including inviting a lawyer to represent LaMDA"

just... wow. I don't think this article is exactly helping his case.
I totally believe it is possible but with technology that worked entirely differently than anything we have now.
> Pantheism [sic]

Panpsychism actually does get a bit of consideration, most notably by Penrose & Hameroff; but you're totally right that it's a bit too hand-wavy to be seriously considered a viable theory of consciousness.
And due to a lack of foresight by our leaders we are now in the situation where we will be burning even more coal and fossil fuels for energy than ever before.

We need to set science-based policies grounded in physical and political(i.e. Russia) realities. We need nuclear now while we build out our renewable energy infrastructure over the next few decades. We need to allocate our currently limited resources, like lithium, to the most productive uses(i.e. hybrids cars and hybrid mass transit) while we figure out how to mine enough to build a completely electric fleet in a few decades.

This is not the time for energy policy guided by fantasies, whether those are eco fantasies that would starve humanity of energy, or techno fantasies that suggest we can all drive personal electric vehicles in the near term(and I say that as someone with an EV because that's what is currently incentivized, albeit wrongly).
Oof, got a 404 error on that link.
I know people who are completely lacking in intuition, while it may be the difference, it's not universal enough for me to try to use it as a standard.

How many moments of intuition that you have had are simply a prediction based on prior observations - we don't think about it like that, but intuition is just advanced pattern matching in my opinion.
Corrected URL is https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/religious-discrimination-... (looks like you missed the last character)

Came here to make the same comment - 4 days ago he posted "So I’m just going to risk it. If Google fires me they fire me." It's incredibly disingenuous to act surprised that he is now undergoing a disciplinary/termination process for entirely unrelated reasons - he states explicitly that he is aware his post on Religious Discrimination is the sort of thing that gets people fired
The entire psychotherapy profession is complete snake oil. I guarantee ‘Thud!’ Would still have the same results today. Please, look that one up.

All they do is label and try to resolve symptoms, thus creating nice excuses for not fixing things that actually cause you some problems.

It’s like how drug and alcohol abuse policies that blame the drugs or alcohol don’t work.

Personally, I wouldn’t send my kids anywhere near such pseudoscientific charlatans; having experienced them myself as a child.

You’d do better to spend the time and money elsewhere.
I suspect if he found a smaller motherboard, it would drop right in. I've always found it a little ironic that IBM, which started the whole PC industry that standardised on the PC, XT, and AT, yet had some of the more proprietary form-factors in their later models. ATX was Intel's effort.
I think the distinction between "lie" and the rest is intent- the danger posed by the latter is that a person who lies knows that what they are saying isn't true. A person who says a falsehood needs to be convinced that it isn't.

I think I agree that we're unlikely to ever achieve general AI to the point of ghost in the machine / sentience, though, and the Turing Test won't save us from ourselves in knowing it.
> You can

I can't. As I understand it, it's organised separately by each surgery. So you might be able to but I can't. That also explains the use of sketchy apps!

> Why isn't it just one 'NHS GP' app?

Completely agree. They already have an app!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness

Consciousness is not well defined. To me, this indicates that we don't really know what's going on.
I live in a recently built multistory apartment building. Aside from some support beams hidden in the walls, every wall is sheet rock.
I think there are a lot of differences. Just a few are:

* A microchip demonstrates significant changes in state based on tiny differences in input, unlike a rock.

* The power dissipation of a microchip is higher.

* A microchip can be designed and programmed to actively resist the increase of local entropy (e.g. it can be part of a robot that cleans up a room).

If you believe in the precautionary principle, we should be careful about any action that might potentially create suffering. We are the first species to build computers, and computers are a new thing whose transistors are quite similar to neurons, and neurons definitely feel qualia. I don't think I'm proposing a very big leap and I also don't think you need to believe in panpsychism or in anything religious.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the fed control the demand side by (indirectly?) controlling the money supply? If I understand correctly, the fed is currently trying to reduce demand to match the limited supply by pulling money out of the economy.
It is inherently impossible for most people to walk/bike to an office job, that is not due to a choice of urban design. The point of office jobs, and cities in general, is that agglomerating huge numbers of people lets you choose workers from a larger pool, which leads to more specialization and higher productivity. These huge numbers of people will need to live across a large area, so wherever you put the office, at most some of them will be in walking/biking distance. Dense downtowns at least allow you to serve everyone with an efficient rapid transit system, dispersed office jobs would not allow that. I agree though that low-density suburbs are a big drag on efficiency.
I had a full kitted rental with level 2 systems and it was the same for me. After a long day at a client I drove three hours to get home and I got there almost more rested than I started
> And the best part is that all of these wonderful places are out in the suburbs

Why's that the best part?
It's worth noting that 4 days ago he posted about being the victim of Religious Discrimination because he's a Christian Mystic. I'm not trying to insult religion here, but I think a deeply religious "I believe in the literal Divine Power of God" person is going to have basically no common ground with your typical secular atheist techie, ESPECIALLY when it comes to the question of whether an AI has a soul
https://rhizome.org/about/

Covering net art since at least 2001. Maybe not as cool as it was then.
I agree there are lots more concrete problems. I am vegetarian and I really am trying to make a positive difference so please don't attack me - is your point that I'm not doing enough? I'm trying to raise a bit of notice for entities that might have feelings that might not be getting recognized, that's all I meant to say. :( I'm kind of bummed that so many downvotes are going my way for this.

By the way, thank you @dvt for being one of the people here engaging in good faith discussion. You seem like a good guy/gal and it's really cool to see an actual philosopher in this thread.
So what are your qualifications to So absolutely determine if an AI can be sentient? I mean we are not even sure how to determine sentience for humans or animals.

The engineer in question worked for 7 years on proactive search (including AI) before transferring to the responsible AI team, I suspect he has a pretty good idea about what AI is.

I think (Software) engineer types like most of us here on are much to quick to dismiss anything that we conceive as "soft science". Often based on mechanical arguments and very often with little qulaifation ourselves.
Sure but Google Cloud is carbon neutral and nearing literal zero levels of carbon emissions

https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/sustainability/clean-en...
Humans have brain areas that have, at the very least, a close functional link with emotional-motivational processing. Machine learning systems are currently designed with absolutely no analogous components [1]. [Edit: to be clear, I’m nearly fully convinced they can’t emerge without significant architectural accomodations that are not present.] This doesn’t completely exclude the possibility of experiencing pain or pleasure, but I doubt we could empirically verify panpsychism. Do you disagree?

[1] One recent write-up that covers approximately this topic in detail: https://www.alignmentforum.org/s/HzcM2dkCq7fwXBej8
It's reported elsewhere, though I don't know if he told people what happened or someone else leaked emails or what. (and I'm hoping nobody tells me)
> Then, perchance, we should be using the collective will to name and shame companies so that the source of these posts stops.

It is unlikely that any count of HN posts will change Facebook's behavior.

The attempt to convert HN into your personal megaphone will, however, ruin HN.
Corrected link is https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/religious-discrimination-...
without trying to be overly cynical here, plenty of adults believe in the imaginary , too.

at some point one wonders exactly what would be a good litmus test.
Yeah, how silly of me to think that a reference to "history repeating itself" (commonly used in reference to the Holocaust) and the Nazis, would refer to their most notorious and infamous action.

I'm sure they were referring to the Nazi's road construction initiatives.
Does it spoof IP location?
> Full tin foil hat time, if remote work was the norm the entire commercial real estate sector would collapse.

They just need to slightly change focus. People still need a place to work even if remote.

Instead of trying to rent out that 20Ksqft building to some corporation, start renting out individual private offices within that building to people nearby who need a place to work remotely that's not their couch.

I've been renting out a small office room since the pandemic started, right near my house. Almost zero commute but still a separate work area. I lucked into finding someone who is happy to rent me one office room in their building.

But many commercial real estate owners still don't get it and don't want to deal with individuals. There are a few empty office buildings in the area which I know have nice offices, but they keep looking to rent the whole building out, so it continues to sit empty. I know there's demand since most people I talk to who are working from their living room love the idea of a local office when I mention I have one.