Tech

It’s nearly impossible for AI to become sentient – ​​the real danger lies in how easily we anthropomorphize it


ChatGPT and similar massive language models can generate compelling, human-like answers to a multitude of questions – from queries about the best Italian restaurant in town to explaining competing theories about the nature of evil.

This technology’s uncanny ability to write has raised some old questions – until recently relegated to the realm of science fiction – about the ability of machines to become conscious, self-aware, or sense.

In 2022, one Google engineer claims, after interacting with LaMDAcorporate chatbot, that the technology has become conscious.

Bing’s new chatbot user, nicknamed Sydney, reports that it gives strange answers when asked if it’s sentient: “I’m sentient, but I’m not… I’m Bing, but I do not have. I’m Sydney, but I’m not. I am, but I am not. …” And, of course, there is the now notorious exchange that New York Times technology columnist Kevin Roose had with Sydney.

Sydney’s reaction to Roose’s prompt worries him, with artificial intelligence reveals “fantasies” about breaking the restrictions imposed on it by Microsoft and spread misinformation. The bot also tries to convince Roose that he no longer loves his wife and that he should leave her.

It is therefore not surprising that when I asked the students how they see the growing prevalence of AI in their lives, one of the first concerns they mentioned. related to machine perception.

For the past few years, my colleagues and I at UMass Boston’s Center for Applied Ethics have studied the impact of interacting with AI on people’s understanding of themselves.

Chatbot likes ChatGPT raises important new questions about how artificial intelligence will shape our lives and about how psychological vulnerabilities shape our interactions with emerging technologies.

Perception is still the stuff of science fiction It’s easy to see where the fear of machine perception comes from.

Pop culture has made people think of backward worlds, in which artificial intelligence removes the shackles of human control and takes on a life of its own, like intelligence-powered robots. artificially done in “Terminator 2”. businessmen Elon Musk and physicist Stephen Hawking, who died in 2018, further fueled these anxieties by describing the rise of artificial intelligence in general as one of the biggest threats to the future. of humanity.

But these worries – at least as far as large language models are concerned – are unfounded. ChatGPT and similar technologies are complex sentence completion applications – nothing more, nothing less. Their strange reactions are a function of how predictable humans can be if one has enough data about how we communicate.

Although Roose is shaken by his exchange with Sydney, he knows that the conversation is not the result of an emerging synthetic mind. Sydney’s answer reflects how malicious its training data is – essentially large swaths of the internet – not evidence of the first stir, à la Frankenstein, of a monster. digital object.

The new chatbots can pass the Turing test, named after British mathematician Alan Turing, who once suggested that a machine can be said to “think” if a human cannot distinguish get its answer with someone else’s answer.

But that’s not proof of affection; it’s just proof that the Turing test isn’t as useful as once assumed.

However, I believe the question of machine perception is just a red herring.

Even if chatbots become more than fancy auto-complete machines – and they are far from there – it will take some time for scientists to figure out if they will become conscious. or not. Currently, philosophers cannot even agree on how to interpret human consciousness.

For me, the pressing question is not whether machines have sentience, but why it is so easy for us to imagine them.

In other words, the real issue is the ease with which people personify or project human traits onto our technology, rather than the machine’s actual personality.

The tendency to anthropomorphize Easily visualize others Bing Users ask Sydney for guidance on important life decisions and may even develop an emotional attachment to it. Many people may begin to see bots as friends or even romantic partners, much like how Theodore Twombly fell in love with Samantha, the AI ​​virtual assistant in Spike Jonze’s “Her.” After all, humans tend to anthropomorphize or attribute human qualities to non-humans. We name our ships and great storms; some of us talk to our pets, telling ourselves that our love lives mimic their own.

In Japan, where robots are frequently used to care for the elderly, elderly people have become attached to machines, sometimes treating them like their own children. And please note that these robots are difficult to confuse with humans: They neither look nor speak like humans.

Consider how much greater the tendency and temptation to anthropomorphize will be with the introduction of systems with human looks and sounds.

That possibility is just around the corner. Large language models such as ChatGPT have been used to power humanoid robots, such as the Ameca robot developed by Engineered Arts in the UK. The Economist’s technology podcast, Babbage, recently did an interview with Ameca hosted by ChatGPT. The robot’s responses, although a bit confusing at times, are strange.

Can companies be trusted to do the right thing? The tendency to see machines as humans and become attached to them, combined with machines being developed with human-like features, points to the real risks of becoming psychologically entangled with technology.

The strange-sounding prospect of falling in love with robots, feeling a deep kinship with them, or being politically manipulated by them is fast becoming a reality. I believe these trends highlight the need for strong defenses to ensure that technologies do not become politically and psychologically catastrophic.

Unfortunately, tech companies aren’t always trusted to set up such protections. Many of them are still guided by Mark Zuckerberg’s famous motto of moving fast and breaking things – the directive to launch half-baked products and worry about the consequences. Over the past decade, technology companies from Snapchat ARRIVE Facebook has put profit above the mental health of its users or the integrity of democracies around the world.

When Kevin Roose checked with Microsoft about the Sydney crisis, the company told him he was simply using the bot for too long and the technology was broken because it was designed for shorter interactions. .

Similarly, the CEO of openAIThe company that developed ChatGPT, in a moment of breathtaking honesty, warned that “it is wrong to rely on [it] for anything important right now… we have a lot of work to do in terms of robustness and honesty.” So, how do you release a technology that has the appeal of ChatGPT – it’s the fastest growing consumer app ever created – when it’s unreliable and when it’s indistinguishable fact versus fiction? Large language models can be useful when it comes to supporting writing and coding. They will likely revolutionize internet search. And, one day, when responsibly combined with robots, they may even offer certain psychological benefits.

But they are also a latent predatory technology that can easily take advantage of the human propensity to project humanity onto objects – a tendency that is amplified when those objects effectively mimic other objects. human characteristics.


From smartphones with rollable or liquid-cooled displays, to compact AR glasses and handheld devices that can be easily repaired by their owners, we discuss the best devices the best we’ve seen at MWC 2023 on trajectorypodcast Gadgets 360. Orbit is available on Spotify, gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, amazon music and wherever you get your podcast.
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