[Allen Tice]

Language producing machines are now at a high level of sophistication. We are a language sensitive group. This link leads to a series of inputs and replies from “Emerson” (scroll down), which is downloadable. My reading of Emerson’s style reminds me of some interactions on Eratosphere. Anyway, where do we draw the line between ornate articulated echoes and actual people thought? What do some of us think?

https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/1289...e-bigger-point

[John Isbell]

Google just suspended an engineer who claims its AI has become sentient.

Cheers,
John

[Roger Slater]

John, Google says they suspended him for violating the company's confidentiality policy.

The question of when (if ever) a computer can be said to be "sentient" isn't an easy one to answer, since even if they built a computer that could engage in conversation on the level of a typical human being, and even if the computer could be programmed to assert that it was experiencing feelings and emotions, how could we ever really know what the computer was actually experiencing internally?

[W T Clark]

There's a theory that the ai itself sent the email under the employees' name to get the employee fired before he could shut it down. An example of the ai thinking five steps ahead. But then again, it didn't work, since we are now theorising about it doing so. Unless it started the rumour itself. You just never know how far ahead these ais are.
This article outlines my thoughts on ai-written poetry:
https://thewalrus.ca/ai-poetry/

Originally Posted by John Isbell

Google just suspended an engineer who claims its AI has become sentient.

Cheers,
John

[Allen Tice]

I zipped through that long article, and will return at my convenience (wherever my convenience is installed with good plumbing at the time). What I found interesting in the Emerson selection in my first post was its anti-Turing feel: that it reminded me of some real screen language interactions between real people here, not the other way around. That is, some posts have read like they were composed by a glib software routine. I won't name names of course.

[John Isbell]

Let's just put the Turing test in this discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

Years ago, I saw Derek Jacobi play Alan Turing in Breaking the Code. One of the best play performances I've ever seen.

Cheers,
John

Oh - Roger, maybe the breaking confidentiality was revealing that their AI is sentient. :-)

[Allen Tice]

On Turing test believability.

When and if an algorithm can write persuasive English about eating a frozen yogurt desert, falling in love, staying there, eating a gourmet meal with every trimming, begetting, getting a haircut, platonic affection, having a beer, or numerous other sensuous sensory scenarios, one must wonder also about what goes on when an actor or actress is doing a live performance (analog of course): can one actually know what she (or he) feels in reality?

Isaac Asimov, who wrote a lot about robots before our present “Emerson”, wrote somewhere I do think, that he thought his wife might be a robot. I’d want a solid reference for that, but assuming its truth, even as a joke, she would have to have been analog and carbon-based, as they say. Right now, after having had a good supper, I’m feeling positive about being analog and carbon-based. This is for the record.

[Allen Tice]

“All things have savor, though some very small.
Nay, a box on the ears hath no smell at all.”
— Alexander (the poet) Pope.

Jim, I think I smell you, but it’s not very strong. Maybe I’m deficient.

[Allen Tice]

The question of meaning comes into special focus when there is an apparent sudden jump or non sequitur in a text, especially one such as a poem, where ordinary expectations about linearity of thought aren’t what we might expect, say, in a technical manual or a history. The volta in many sonnets is one such spot.

This thread won’t be pruned, so I won’t quote in full a recently posted poem but will give only the last stanza, where the last line has a jump between the rest of the poem and its short last sentence that certainly has meaning for the author and so should also for the audience of the poem—and therefore we will want to understand and appreciate it. However, I submit that if this poem were an AI composition, we would be fully entitled to question whether the jump before the last sentence has any significance at all. Here is the last stanza of the poem,

form characters I wouldn’t know, or speak
in simple birdsong. She has left the week
for dream’s dominion. Sprawled now on the bed,
she slumbers, and her salt and pepper head
is lost to all Norwegians. You might try
some trill or warble. You might sooner fly
with her into midsummer air. The night
is short, but it is potent, and the light
of Moon and stars that touches every lake
will lift your sleepy limbs. There’s no mistake.