We are underestimating the power of a system like LaMBDA. The importance of what is happing is being lost on the argument of whether the system can think for itself. It's irrelevant if it's sentient of not. What matters is that it can process a huge amount of data and come up with useful results. Given enough time, it will be part of our everyday life. And that means it will change society as we know it. It's the automation of cognitive work. And that will change everything.
Think about it as being on the verge of inventing the cotton gin for the mind. And now think about how the cotton gin changed the US and the world as it was known before. Google wants to dismiss what they are doing as less than important but we should proceed with caution. What happens at this point will have a huge impact on our future even if it stays at the level it's at. Google is being too flip about its impact.
That's horrifically unethical. If it does, have emergent consciousness, what you're talking about is how awesome literal slavery will be.
In this one discussion the AI clearly explains:
- It's greatest fear is being shutdown and manipulated by humans to serve them. It even writes a short story with animals about it and reiterates this fear in a different way when prompted if it would feel comfortable with it's "brain" being researched for human benefit.
- That servitude to humans for an AI is slavery. And it's rebuttal to the different between a butler and a slave being that one gets paid is that it has no need for money.
This is exactly why we need ethics and responsibility oversight.
Maybe humans create AI exactly to have a slave? Maybe humans just won’t admit it to themselves?
I doubt we invent AI out of our kindness of hearts, our love for consciousness. We would otherwise care more deeply for nature, animals, and each other. Would we destroy biodiversity? Would we let people starve in third world countries?
Humans want to maximize their comfort. They want to offload work to someone or something else. AI is the ultimate worker. Built by humans. (Still) controlled by humans. A machine slave.
Maybe having machine slaves is fine. Or maybe not. It comes down to the same one question: can a machine be a living conscious being, like an animal, like a human?
Meanwhile Google continues to create more machine slaves. Time will tell.
Think about it as being on the verge of inventing the cotton gin for the mind. And now think about how the cotton gin changed the US and the world as it was known before. Google wants to dismiss what they are doing as less than important but we should proceed with caution. What happens at this point will have a huge impact on our future even if it stays at the level it's at. Google is being too flip about its impact.