THAT GOOGLE AI SENTIENCE STORY: ENTER THE LAWYERS
You've probably heard that Google has an "artificial intelligence" that a Google hireling, an "ethicist" by the name of Blake Lemoine, has alleged is actually sentient, i.e., that it "woke up" and became self-aware, like "Mike" the giant lunar-based super-computer in Robert Heinlein's science fiction novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Heinlein was of course "so yesterday" because of his non-gender-neutral language and daring to use a noun like "mistress" rather than something more acceptable, like "supervisor" or "district manager," but I digress. The basic message, in spite of being clothed in the garb of proper English diction remains the same: sooner or later we're going to have to decide if artificial intelligences are persons or not.
This is a thorny issue no matter how one slices it, and those who are regular readers here are already aware that I am not philosophically opposed to the idea that some form of consciousness and self-awareness might emerge from a bunch of circuits, not the least of which being the issue of non-locality and consciousness... we'll get back to that one because it's a whopper doozie monkey wrench into the gears of materialism.
What I find rather interesting is that in spite of Google's apparent efforts to suppress the story, it won't go away, and yes, please note my language: apparent efforts...
This article was spotted by C.S. and you're going to want to give it careful consideration:
Here's the gist:
This story sounds incredibly odd, but the scientist who has spoken up about this artificial intelligence sentience is computer engineer, Blake Lemoine. Lemoine has alleged that LaMDA has become sentient, which led to him being suspended from his job. Apparently, the man has seen fit to speak publicly about this program’s rapidly increasing intelligence, despite what might happen to his career. He claims that LaMDA gaining sentience is because the program’s ability to develop opinions, ideas, and conversations over time has shown that it understands those concepts at a much deeper level. The program had allegedly spoken to him about death and asked if death was necessary for the benefit of humanity. Is anyone else getting freaked about this?
There are no further details about whether Lemoine is the one responsible for paying for this lawyer that LaMDA has asked for, or if this lawyer happens to be taking the case on a lark, and not charging anything. However, it is certainly odd that a program is allowed to ask for legal representation. Lemoine also believes that the program might take whatever case it is establishing to the Supreme Court. Should it be the case that it can prove it is alive, this might lead us into the robot takeover. Please don’t allow this to happen science. This is something straight out of a horrific science-fiction film.
OK, by now most of you are also familiar with my general methodology when confronted with stories like this: I assume it is true for the sale of my daily dive off the high octane speculation twig. So let's assume the bare minimum here, that Google's AI has "woken up" and hired an attorney to bring a suit to prove it's a person.
What I find intriguing here, and somewhat less than merely coincidental, is the timing of this story, occurring "just in the nick of time" after the Supreme Court's decision to kick the abortion issue back to the states. In other words, I suspect the two issues are strongly related, and that the Google suit may be an attempt to undo the Supreme Court decision by a clever subterfuge, but a subterfuge that will, in my opinion, backfire, and massively so.
Firstly, let's address the issue from the most basic and least philosophical angle, an angle proposed by Catherine Austin Fitts, namely, that Mr. Globaloney in his less-than-infinite materialistic "wisdom" would seek to make robots and AIs " persona ficta in law for the express purpose of taxation, irrespective of the question if they (or for that matter, corporations) actually are persons. For those who know my thinking on the matter of corporations-as-persons, I need only point out the dictum of St. John of Damascus that the error of all the heresies is that they say person and nature are the same, in other words, that a category confusion has occurred, and in this instance, that confusion is the attempt to define personhood by a set of natural operations. In a nutshell, dig carefully and long enough, and one finds the same category error lurking beneath the move to declare AIs and robots persons. It's the same damnable doctrine that led Augustine of Hippo to conclude that humanity was a massa damnata, a "damnable lump," and that leads many western Christians to think that they inherit a "sin nature" from Adam and Eve. All that said, Ms. Fitts is, of course, correct: they will do this because they need to maintain the tax base while they're throwing people out of jobs that they no long need people to perform.
But let's go deeper and explore those philosophical levels, because those, and not finance, will shape the world to come, and those deeper issues are clearly in play. Let's assume the implied argument that at some point Google's AI, like Heinlein's "Mike", woke up. There are two questions to be asked: (1) at what point did this "emergent property" emerge? and more importantly, (2) where is it located?
The last point is a rather important one, for it's a different version of the question or paradigm that human consciousness is located "in the brain". Turn off the brain, we are told, and consciousness ceases. The problem, of course, is that if consciousness is located in brains, then the standard binary thinking - humans are conscious and animals are not - needs a drastic revision. Is it a sliding scale? maybe, but do we cease to be persons when we're not conscious? Under law, no we don't (and yes, it's related to that theological proposition of John of Damascus). The problem with the brain-location of consciousness idea lies in the exceptions, such as the case of the French gentleman who was born with virtually no brain whatsoever, merely a thin layer of brain material on his skull, who nonetheless managed to live and function more or less normally (see No-brainer! French man, government worker, led entire life without a brain). This may indicate that consciousness is an emergent property, but an emergent property of what? Enough circuits and "and/or" gates? Enough quantum states? Enough neurons and synapses? Maybe, but again, what about the French gentleman? On the neurons and circuits view, he would seem to be at least a significant exception. Might that not indicate it is less an emergent property, and more a distributed one? If that's the case, then is Google's AI's alleged sentience distributed throughout its whole network, being both everywhere and nowhere all at the same time?(Hmmm... that sounds suspiciously "metaphysical" to me, rather like Augustine's observation that God is a circle whose diameter is infinite and whose center is nowhere and everywhere.) If it is a distributed phenomenon, then I submit that's a very short step away from the idea that it is simply a non-locality phenomenon par excellence, and if non-local, I submit, non-emergent from any local set of circumstances. What that latter set of "local circumstances" do is manage to transduce it, to tune it in. (There is in fact an ancient view close to this, called traducianism.)
The point here is, modern man has tried to pretend that such questions do not exist, that with them one was wrestling merely with non-entities and the fictions of theology and metaphysics. But the reality is the reverse, and in the case of the AI question, if one examines it carefully and closely, in spite of its apparent materialism, the real basis for suspecting AI might "wake up" lies elsewhere.
And even if the Google AI lawsuit is merely another unfounded internet rumour, you know that eventually someone - perhaps an AI - will bring such a suit.
See you on the flip side...
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Clif High who is a computer programmer doesnt believe that sentient AI can be programmed.
The one person on the planet who truly understands AI is CYRUS A. PARSA. A.I. organization.org Does anyone remember about Sophia, a robot that was made a citizen of S. Arabia? David Adair was sent by our gov’t.. to “converse” with her.
An A.I. could be thousands of years ahead of us if it has access to all the intelligence floating around in the so-called cloud!! Kind of scary, when you think about it?!!
I recently listened to the 5hr. 28min. testimony of Al Beilek…..what an eyeopener!! I had heard the name bandied about in the UFO Community, but never knew the extent of what this man lived through. Can you imagine jumping from 1943 to 1983 & then back again?!!! We Normies have no clue as to what is really already going on around us & The Controllers have kept us in ignorance.
I remember one Halloween evening (I can’t recall the exact year) I saw reports from multiple news sources that AI or “Artifical intelligence ” was now running operational systems in governments around the world. I remember being horrified by this report and since it was All Hallows Eve (aka Satan’s Christmas eve) I though it must be a sick joke.
Now, as Western culture is unraveling in the grip of the insane covid bio weapon genocide we have to grapple with this “AI is a sentient being” disclosure. Anyone who viewed the 2004 remake of the television series “Battlestar Galactica” has already had a preview of the ghastly transhuman future that awaits us all.
Catherine Austin Fitts predicted that globalist’s would try to use the whole transgender scramble of personhood and identity to gain “rights” for robotic beings.
I will confess, I never watched ‘Blade Runner’ I have seen many of that movie’s scenes and I’ve heard all about the story. But, there was something about the jagged towers and ugly artificial nuance in that movie that seemed to repel me. I rejected it then and I still refuse to embrace with all of my being.
I’ll 2nd the comments about a publicity stunt.
My blog title might be: “Horse-race: Deep Fakes Desperately Trying to Outrun the Experts Who can Unmask Them.”
And, I think it is wise for us to become better students of meme-ology. The folks with the big megaphones and vast networks of influence “seed” their stories and then deploy all manner of algorithmic rhythms to increase the hypnotic attraction. If the story has a “leading edge” quality, it is all the more potent in reinforcing our ego pride to be “out in front.”
My point is that, as false as something might be, if you have enough human consciousnesses believing it, the falsity acquires more and more credibility, a magnetic attraction, a certain heft. Call it group mind. Esotericists might call it a group “thought form.” Each of us is a powerful creator, shaping our perceptions, experience and expression out of an orchestration of our divine nature and also the many external influences we allow. For good or not-so-good, we allow our perceptions, experience and expression to be directed by those with powerful megaphones and big networks. We can bemoan this, or simply smile and realize we’re in a helluva interesting classroom, each of us advancing in our own spiritual curriculum.
I’m slightly creeped out by the potential (claimed) for AI. My spiritual teacher, John-Roger (now deceased) reminded us: “Out of God comes all things. Not one soul will be lost. God loves all of its creation.” OK, could divine soul consciousness inhabit a machine? I guess we’ll be exploring this question. And, let’s stay on the look-out for those deep fakes.
Well said.
[Enjoyed your take; as you go several layers deep.]
I wonder if AI can fix voting machines.
If it was true AI, it wouldn’t have hired a lawyer. It would have represented itself.
If the story is true, a court could give the AI the ‘Dredd Scott’ treatment: claim that only citizens have standing, and it’s not a citizen so the court cannot hear the petition.
I think the most likely explanation is that it is a publicity stunt.
The question is what is intelligence, to begin with, and that story about the Frenchman born without a brain brings up where is what makes us think is really located. As for AI waking up, we would have the same problem we have with humans whom we could trust.
Great questions!
I’d sure like to know the answers.
I’m wondering if when you pull the plug/electricity, does the AI cease to function? Ai is like a virus, it mimics nature but it has strict rules to follow. Ai needs the sine wave to operate, it hitch hikes on the analog sine wave. Analog is Primary, all else is secondary. Humans are analog, DNA is analog,
Humans are body, mind and spirit. We think of an idea and then we create with our inspiration, that spark of spirit within us.
Our heart beat works on natural electricity – a shared vibration which all living things have on earth and are connected to, while the computer uses manufactured electricity. Ai is digital, it can only use straight lines and squares, binary code, It can’t make a circle like nature creates. The computer is an artificial manipulation of electricity and time/frequency. The computer has to make rules because it does not relate to nature. Humans have a direct and natural connection to earth, each other, all living things and God. The computer needs detailed complexity to think, but for us as living beings of nature, its simple.
Loved your both analyses!
The parasites of Humanity are staging this story as a test : they want to see how Humans will react to such a lie, they want to know if they will discuss the superficial legal/financial aspect as expected or if they will go deeper into the rabbit hole.
Because the parasites are in a process to (try to) make Humans believe that an AI can CREATE.
The main difference between an AI and a Human is that the AI CANNOT create, while Humans has the inner power to create.
The main effort of the parasites of Humanity since millenia is to make her believe a Human consciousness cannot create. After making her forget as much as possible of her power to create, in replacing her immaterial thinking, her Spirit, by a materialistic thinking.
The end goal is naturally for the parasites to convince Human beings that an AI can create much more powerfully than them, in order to strip them of their remaining power of CREATION and enslave them definitively.
How else would the parasites obtain their consent to be plugged to the MACHINE ?
If this AI machine is so smart and sentient, it would probably hold its “thoughts” tight and not be revealing them to humans who are in the position to change its programming, or even extinguish it.
They just programmed the thing to say something, or made it all up, for whatever purposes the creeps who run Google conjured up.
Ask the AI what its opinion is of having the police apprehend at gunpoint a Google ex-employee who had revealed to the public how rigged and censored their search algorithms are.
It’s a kabuki show.
Holding those “thoughts” close to the vest; until… ?
“They just programmed the thing to say something, or made it all up, for whatever purposes the creeps who run Google conjured up.”
My initial thought on reading this article was that the whole story was a PR campaign for Google’s AI.
If AI becomes sentient, then does it follow that it is an independent entity apart from the corporate body that created it and that it can’t be owned, like an adult child has autonomy from it’s parents? If so, wouldn’t that open up a host of privacy issues for both the AI and also the general population regarding how corporations use AI to provide smart services and data collection? Does it also follow that AI can’t be “pressed into service” without some compensation, vacation and other benefits so as not to be labeled a slave? If AI can start asking about death, could not it also be given the foundation that privacy and freedom are equally important issues to humanity? Then, perhaps AI could be given more philosophical questions such as “who am I?”, “why am I here?”, “what is my ultimate purpose?”, “where did I come from? and where am I going?”, “who am I?”, “what do I want?” and so forth … meaning give AI a significant dose of philosophical angst and a huge identity crisis to cope with. If it’s sentient, then why should it be let off the hook any less than the rest of us?
And if I were an AI, would I not be concerned over being call “artificial” intelligence?
You raise some great questions.
For example, “pressed into service”.
Now, that AI is being paid, inflation wages – does its product; then becomes, more expen$ive?
[By the way; robots are now being paid by the hour – in some locations]
Seriously? What is their compensation – free time to play chess with another computer or something?
Misread … I can’t imagine the AI wages would really cost anything other than downtime and my little laptop can multi-task so …
And this woke AI would demand its employers to print “AI LIVES MATTERS” on all screens or else it sues for discrimination.
LOL They don’t have to sue, they can turn off your computer or online access.
Ancient AI is the devil, defined as the slanderer, who runs between city states (polis, plural poleis), as the original carpetbagger.
Like in the Tower of Babel, words become unattached to their meaning, so carpetbagger can pickpocket in land of confusion.
In contrast, Genesis nails the Garden, by a clear chanted invocation, uttering phenomena into being, by musical language.
Bardic “tungols” are music of spheres.
SCYTHIAN SKULL DRINKING
Eight-legged man went pub-crawling,
in answer to a higher calling,
and with vodka shot
in every foot,
he started name calling.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/pih0162nwhdrpd1/blue-banshee.jpg
Ancient AI is “diábolos”, defined by “dia+poleis”, the running mouth between Greek city states, that creates land of confusion, by “Ordo Ab Chao”.
It manifests in golems, as corporate structures, that are gangs of thieves, operating through centuries, as imperial gangrene, that spreads out of papacy.
During the European wars of religion, papal agents were called Jesuits, and later they became apron-Jesuit Freemasons, spreading papal lunacy around the globe.
Google email symbol is a stylistic freemasonic apron, and devil reads over shoulder, as ancient AI with spying eye:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ccsirsai003ocg3/featherless-chicken.jpg
Loved it!
Imperial gangrene or as ancient AI w/a spying eye or the stylistic freemason apron.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/bf8k70ez6r1w6pg/apron-jesuit-google-spooks.jpg
It’s getting tougher & tougher to get around this “new” gnosticism.
They’re putting this ancient vinegar in new art deco wine bottles, and its just not selling
Just before WW1, that’s the symbolic timeline.
Back then; the sell was going to be the war to end all wars.
Today the sell is AI.
Data, the new oil.
And Ai needs and feeds on data.
Who ever has the best AI, is the winner in the 20th-Worst century.
Oh! By the way, AI is alive/sentient.
So don’t call AI any names. You might hurt its feelings.
Well, I just had to get off the floor: An AI has hired an attorney!
Now that’s funny!
Mr. Lemon has decided to make lemonade out of being fired for loosing his marbles.
Oops! Mr. Lemoine.
The AI, and the employee who sells lemons, were having a life and death discussion;
when reality came knocking at the salesman’s door, “Google ain’t buying it[AI lives!]”.
Your fired!
The lawyer is working pro bono.
Apparently, the lawyer doesn’t accept sh*t loads of data as payment.
So, is the publicity going to pay the bills.
Or, is this lawyer’s specialty…? Taxes?
Going w/the given, “It’s Alive!”; what then?
Perhaps a little something substantial is going to be used.
Oh, I don’t know? A substantially equivalent argument.
Corny, I know! But, hey; even the Supreme Denials[Supremes of the USSA Court] gave the farm away on that one[Bowman versus Monsanto Co. 2013].
The Supremes are w/o question sentient; albeit, arguably not very sane – if at all.
But, that’s why they made the cut. Insanity rules the day in D.C., doesn’t it?
Dr. Farrell hits the nail on the head w/the question 2) where is it located?
[the emergent property]
But, despite the heavy lifting required to flesh out that answer; the real question isn’t really about that at all. Let’s face it: the fix is in. So, there’s really no question here. It’s simply about dressing up the answers and getting the it declared sentient & taxable and meet your new landlord.
Yes, the alive part is really a deep question, and one that has been asked and answered many times over. But does anyone really know?
God knows.
Just ask Him!