The Sentient AI?

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

Isn't hubris/pride one of the seven deadly sins?

Can AI sin?

Where are you getting this from?

Right now the fastest supercomputer is the Tianhe-2 in China. It can perform 55 petaFLOPS per second... Thats a quadrillion (one thousand trillion) floating-point calculations per second.

Show me a human being any human being who can perform that many floating point calculations that fast....

And is it sentient, or even close?

[TomMcC]

Ok... there are about about one billion neurons in the human brain, those neuron forms about 1,000 connections to other neurons, amounting to more than a trillion connections. Let’s assume each one of those connections is a function and let’s assume that each function occurs simultaneously in the brain. That still pails in comparison to the quadrillion calculations per second current supercomputers are capable of.

Now our supercomputer can execute those quadrillion calculations instantaneously, simultaneously and keep 100% accurate track of each one.

Our brain, yeah imagine for a minute you trying to focus on one trillion thoughts or functions at the same time, can you do that? I’ll bet you can’t even focus on the multiplication tables for 9 simultaneously.

Who's conflating now? Since you are an atheist, and probably a materialist, you equate the mind with how many connections are in a blob of tissue in our skulls. For you, reason, emotion, sentience etc. are merely electro chemical reactions going on in our heads. Well, I just don't agree with that whole line of thinking. Computers don't have thoughts, they just have 1's and 0's or whatever internal language they are using. You, again, have conflated a human thought with a computer function. You think those are the same? The irony in all this is that because you seem to think that something like sentience is merely a function of how fast a computer can be. How in the world do we have the attribute of sentience with such a puny bio-computer in our head. It's also ironic that these supercomputers with all their blinding speed were invented by puny bio-computers in men's heads.
Speed and raw power might and probably are great for crunching numbers and other scientific purposes, but it sure doesn't equal a human mind. This is a classic case of comparing apples and oranges...the human mind with computers.

Where's all the rest of the believers in machine sentience? Speak up.

[WillBrink]

Can AI sin?

A Q for philosophers and theologians. My take is, if it's sentient, than yes. That's assuming you believe in sin from the religious POV.

And is it sentient, or even close?

No, but did you watch the vid? We are not talking about any computer AI, we are talking about that that computer based AI

[TomMcC]

A Q for philosophers and theologians. My take is, if it's sentient, than yes. That's assuming you believe in sin from the religious POV.




No, but did you watch the vid? We are not talking about any computer AI, we are talking about that that computer based AI

I'm supposedly out of my lane when it comes to machine sentience, but now we have somebody going all religion saying a machine can sin...just wow.

[kerplode]

I read something recently about this brain to computer comparison situation that was interesting.

Back in like 2013, Japanese and German researchers ran a simulation on the Fujitsu K. They modeled a network of 1.73 Billion nerve cells connected by 10.4 trillion synapses using 82,944 processors and a petabyte of RAM.

Their model represented about 1% of the neural connectivity of the average human brain. It took 40 minutes to simulate 1 second of real-time brain activity.

They didn't use the full capacity of the K, and it's no longer the fastest supercomputer, but it's pretty clear that the computation capacity of the human neural network is vast. It is also amazingly energy efficient. Something like 20W for the brain. I bet the K was using MWs during the above sim...

I also read that the estimated "processing power" to run just the visual cortex alone is something north of 1 PetaFLOPs.

So yeah, you're not consciously doing a thousand trillion computations a second, but it's happening silently in the background like magic. Electromagnetic vibrations being processed into a perception of reality. The human brain is amazing.

As to sentient AI, I really doubt this guys google chat bot is sentient. Maybe someday (and God help us if it does come to pass), but not today. I do think that if an AI becomes self-aware, it will likely not be one built by man...It will have been created by an AI-creating AI. Yeah...Researchers are doing this. Using things they don't completely understand to create things they can never possibly understand. It's scary, really.

Speaking of that, is it just me, or do AI ethicists seem to always be focused on "We need to be sure it isn't rAcisT!!" rather than on "how do we keep these things from exterminating humanity?" or "Does being able to do this automatically mean that we really should do it?"

[LoboTBL]

"...as Christian and an ex-pastor so here I'm gonna answer you with a biblical answer since you ask Christians. I thought about that a long time ago and, in "Christian/biblical" term to be sentient would mean that the A.I. somehow developed a "soul". Problem is the Bible teach that a soul comes with blood. No blood; no soul. THEN AGAIN we hear rumors about underground people that would like to create some kind of chimera; a combination of a living being with a machine. If that was to be achieved then we would be facing something else. And perhaps we would be facing the infamous Beast of Revelation, that gets mortally wounded but manage to not die. And so on, so: my answer is A) not if there is no blood involved and it's purely technological, I don't believe we'd see this, no. but B) There may come a time when human tissue, DNA, blood, whatever, is combined with A.I. technologie and then the rules of the game would be changed... and maybe not for the better."

It seems your friend actually gave serious thought to the question and answered in the most honest way he could without making it ad hominem. I can't say I disagree with his point about human tissue being combined with AI technology. That is truly the stuff of science fiction at this point but it cannot be ruled out as a possibility in the future. We've already demonstrated our willingness to incorporate electric and electromechanical devices in our bodies (pacemakers, prosthetic limbs that are more than aesthetic) and the potential for it to be done with AI could be there at some point. There is no doubt a line between where we are now and what could be that we should not ever cross.

It's been the subject of fiction for many years (Bionic Man, Terminator, et al) but if the human mind can conceive it, it can quite likely be accomplished at some point. Which is not to say if something can be done, it should be done.

[LoboTBL]

Can AI sin?



And is it sentient, or even close?

I'd have to say no, AI cannot sin. At least not with my understanding of what a sin is. Cats are sentient beings but they don't commit sins, unless unknown to all of us there is a cat god they all believe in or debate the existence of and said cat god has established a set moral code for all cats worldwide.

Could AI or a machine with AI become self aware? It's endlessly debatable right now. Would it be true self awareness or programmed self awareness? Would programmed self awareness actually be the same?

[WillBrink]

It seems your friend actually gave serious thought to the question and answered in the most honest way he could without making it ad hominem. I can't say I disagree with his point about human tissue being combined with AI technology. That is truly the stuff of science fiction at this point but it cannot be ruled out as a possibility in the future. We've already demonstrated our willingness to incorporate electric and electromechanical devices in our bodies (pacemakers, prosthetic limbs that are more than aesthetic) and the potential for it to be done with AI could be there at some point. There is no doubt a line between where we are now and what could be that we should not ever cross.

It's been the subject of fiction for many years (Bionic Man, Terminator, et al) but if the human mind can conceive it, it can quite likely be accomplished at some point. Which is not to say if something can be done, it should be done.

Already happening now BTW. I know someone right now (ret SEAL who lost leg from knee down) being fitted for a advanced prosthetic that will attach to his nervious system and be legit man/machine bionic. There's already chips designed that will interface with the brain etc etc. Again, not if but when what I discuss in this thread happens, and no amount to cognitive dissonance demonstrated by some, which change that. Full stop.

My friend is one of the truly rare people I can have extensive discussions on religion due his approach per above. Unlike the vast majority of religious people, he's fully capable of admitting that he does not actually know what his faith tells him is true, only that he has a deep faith that it is, and that's good enough for him, and me. That is, he has no problems accepting other possibilities exist, and that's all I ask for from any person of religious faith.

Back to sentient AIs...

[WillBrink]

I'd have to say no, AI cannot sin. At least not with my understanding of what a sin is. Cats are sentient beings but they don't commit sins, unless unknown to all of us there is a cat god they all believe in or debate the existence of and said cat god has established a set moral code for all cats worldwide.

Could AI or a machine with AI become self aware? It's endlessly debatable right now. Would it be true self awareness or programmed self awareness? Would programmed self awareness actually be the same?

I was thinking of that in my response also. We'd have to qualify and expand on that issue, to include a level of self awareness and intelligence equal or exceeding ours. Does a creature without a soul like an animal or machine as the Christian POV would have it, capable of sin? Does one need to possess a soul to sin? I don't know know the answer to that not being well versed in scripture, but I find a very interesting line of inquiry.

[TomMcC]

So, now it's ok to talk about religion and AI, and their intersection?