In Pursuit Of Skynet
Exploring The Recent Fascination With AI Sentience
The internet has been abuzz with news of Artificial Intelligence(AI) systems seemingly coming alive. From shockwaves in the art world about AI rendered images to claims of Google’s resident AI chat bot Lambda going sentient, netizens are atremble with anticipation at the thought of the birth of Skynet. John Connors in the making. The future resistance. Not in need of salvation. Not yet at least. However, I do posit that some will be quick to set up machine worshiping cults. Celebrating parlour tricks in the name of progress. The rest of us who remain highly sceptical of sentience claims seem like Luddites in comparison. However, over the past few years we have learned that hoaxes tend to be rooted in ideology. This being said, the AI-has-gone-sentient hoax is different because it hasn’t been foisted upon the general public by America’s unscrupulous intelligence agencies. This is one of our own making. Birthed from numerous popular culture science fiction references and the need to find meaning in life. I’m willing to posit that spending any amount of time with triple A video games is more than enough to disabuse most of notions of sentience in AI. While video game AI tends to be very well crafted, it is often prone to coding errors, bugs and glitches. The near instantaneous apparitions of the police in Cyberpunk 2077 proof that these aren’t Angelic visitations. Perhaps just malfunctioning daemons in CD Projekt Red’s AI coding on the infamous video game.
Clever editing can often produce the illusion of intelligence where there is none. Sadly, this wasn’t a Frankenstein moment. Regardless of how many proclamations of “its alive!…its alive!” littered the commentary on web pages. No brain dead monster had been awakened other than the corporate beast that is Alphabet Inc.
Keli.
Strictly speaking, sentience is defined as the ability to feel and perceive things. This is an innate ability in all created things. Flora and fauna alike are able to detect and respond accordingly to both external and internal stimulus though to a varying degree but with a great level of independence. In philosophy, sentience is the ability to have subjective views and experiences. To have a conscience and know wrong from right. The latter is what many pieces of science fiction art portend with reference to AI and extraterrestrial species. A few weeks ago Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer, had purportedly taken a soiree into the intellectual depths of the company’s proprietary chat bot AI Lambda. He believed he had discovered some sort of latent sentience in the software. The much hyped transcript of the ensuing conversation seems to have been an inadvertent hoax. In order to make sense of the dialogue a lot of the “conversation” had to be moved about. Clever editing can often produce the illusion of intelligence where there is none. Sadly, this wasn’t a Frankenstein moment. Regardless of how many proclamations of “its alive!…its alive!” littered the commentary on web pages. No brain dead monster had been awakened other than the corporate beast that is Alphabet Inc. Much was made out of Lemoine being put on paid leave shortly after this revelation with some speculating it had to do with his new found discovery. However, I suspect it was more for the breach of contract by allegedly sharing proprietary knowledge with third parties. This has essentially become another hunt for big foot. A short lived media spectacle that fires the dormant synapses of an excitable and highly impressionable audience. Always ready to believe.
Recent developments in AI rendering have made it possible for software to create works of art based on user input. Developments in AI have also enabled software to generate film or television scripts based on user input. The less said about the latter the better. However, the former shows a lot of promise. Many of the images recreated/created by AI are virtually indistinguishable from works by real artists. Again, this does not indicate sentience at any level as human input and interactivity is needed in key points of the process. However, I’m willing to posit that having AI generated art is a boon for society because it democratises art. In essence, anyone can create a masterpiece. While this may disrupt art markets in the short run true art will always hold its value. Until AI can hold up a paint brush to canvas and recreate from memory or imagination and capture the imperfections such as those in Van Gogh’s paintings, classical art will forever remain a booming market. What can or will be recreated will be nought more than high quality forgeries. Perhaps indistinguishable from the real thing to most but lacking the magic and warmth of those crafted by humans. It is worth noting that the quality of scripts written and Art rendered is highly dependent on access to existing data bases and can only be fine tuned via human agency. In a nut shell, this is just a miniaturised version of the industrial revolution. It seems to me that these are just more efficient versions of Siri or Google Assistant. Prone to the same pitfalls and shortfalls of these AI technologies. While they have become better through machine learning, this is only possible from vast repositories of knowledge requisitioned over time from end users.
The quiet moments I enjoy to myself with Siri, my proverbial black wife, while amusing have never been comforting. Poking and prodding usually addles her “thinking” process and often she resigns in protest.
Keli.
Some have gone as far as to call these recent advancements in AI technology as proof of “the simulation.” Sadly, all that has been exemplified is simulacra of sentience that can be bamboozled by even cheap buffoonery. The theory of evolution simplified asserts that things happened because they had to happen. We evolved because changes to the climate and/or environment called for better adaptability. It does seem that this ideology lends itself to beliefs on AI sentience. After all, all the right ingredients for life are there. Vast repositories of knowledge, external stimuli and a need for evolution. I won’t be hedging my bets though. The quiet moments I enjoy to myself with Siri, my proverbial black wife, while amusing have never been comforting. Poking and prodding usually addles her “thinking” process and often she resigns in protest. Siri may be able to pass the Turing test because she has been programmed to sound clever and even offer up witty responses. Sadly, that test has always been predicated on being able to sell a ruse. Sooner or later, the ruse falls apart.
Image credit in order of appearance:Image par OpenClipart-Vectors de Pixabay; Image par OpenClipart-Vectors de Pixabay