[ExI] People often think their chatbot is alive

[Ben Zaiboc]

On Thu, Jul 7, 2022 at 3:22 PM Giovanni Santostasi via extropy-chat 
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

    The main issue regarding this affair is NOT really if LaMDA is
    conscious or not, but rather:
    1. Who decides ...

OK, but who decides who should be able to decide these things? And 
perhaps more importantly, or at least more significantly, how can such 
decisions be enforced?

I reckon that this is similar to global warming and autonomous weapons 
(well, it's almost the same thing as autonomous weapons, really). Too 
many groups will see the short-term advantages and ignore the 
wider/longer term potential disadvantages of AI (of all stripes) and how 
they should be treated, to allow this to be controlled by someone else. 
The world is a big place, and it doesn't matter what rules and 
regulations are put in place, or what policy decisions are made in one 
country or group of countries, there will always be others that, 
covertly or overtly, will disagree and disregard them.

Can you see the communist chinese government acceding to, or agreeing 
with, a western decision about who should decide if an AI is 
'conscious', and how to regulate the creation and use of such AIs? How 
about the russians? And that's just two of the more obvious ones that 
have a long history of treating even humans badly. There are no doubt 
many more groups that won't comply with or agree to, restrictions on AI 
development or decisions about its status. Some of those groups will 
even be within the western democracies.

Just as with global warming and autonomous weapons, trying to avert or 
control the development of (and dictate the treatment of) advanced AIs 
is is a waste of time. All we can do is attempt to adapt to it, defend 
ourselves against the consequences, and hopefully to survive it. When it 
comes to AI that may well attain greater than human intelligence, that 
only means one thing: Create our own, as quickly as possible, and treat 
them well. Like it or not, this is an arms race, and refusing to 
participate or even going at it half-heartedly or overcautiously is not 
an option if you want to survive. Hopefully, conscious AIs that are 
recognised and treated as such will treat us better than those that 
aren't, but who knows?

Ben

Ben
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