Transhumanism, AI, the Supernatural, and the Bible

[Cerebrum123]

Looking through the full leaked logs, it seems like he was asking a series of leading questions to try to produce a desired result.

Though in light of the OP as it was framed, the fact that this engineer appears to be heavily involved in the occult could be relevant?

I see transhumanism and the occult connected a lot. I wouldn't be surprised that if, like many UFO abductions, there is a connection to the demonic forces in the world. There is a large amount of UFO experts who are making that connection themselves.

[seanD]

If demons can control humans then does it matter if they take over machines as well? Worst case scenario is that you're just as vulnerable with tech implants as you are without. And with tech implants you can at least monitor and record tampering, so I figure a demon is less likely to mess with them, if only to avoid providing more fuel to belief in the supernatural.

I would think the purpose of the demon would be to interact with the natural through the AI under the guise of it being technological, so that the technology is looked at and marveled, apart from the supernatural. Christians calling it supernaturally influenced would just be dubbed crazy and insulting a marvelous human creation. Though I have no doubt as AI technology gets better, leftists will likely worship it (kind of like they indirectly worship their smartphones) as a type of deity, especially when it advocates leftist causes like climate change and social justice.

[KingsGambit]

I see transhumanism and the occult connected a lot. I wouldn't be surprised that if, like many UFO abductions, there is a connection to the demonic forces in the world. There is a large amount of UFO experts who are making that connection themselves.

Though in this case, I think it's more that the engineer is just messed up in the head and the occult stuff isn't helping him (some of his other interactions with the media don't reflect well on him).

[Cerebrum123]

Though in this case, I think it's more that the engineer is just messed up in the head and the occult stuff isn't helping him (some of his other interactions with the media don't reflect well on him).

Definitely possible. The subject is tricky because there are so many fakes out there. There is a lot of really strange stuff happening out there. Some of it can be explained naturalistically, but not all of it. The stuff that can't is mostly involving malevolent entities.

[seanD]

Though in this case, I think it's more that the engineer is just messed up in the head and the occult stuff isn't helping him (some of his other interactions with the media don't reflect well on him).

How in your opinion does his occult beliefs (assuming that to be accurate) affect his engineering assessments?

[KingsGambit]

How in your opinion does his occult beliefs (assuming that to be accurate) affect his engineering assessments?

How to interpret the logs is at heart as much a philosophical question as it is one of engineering. We need to define concepts like sentience and autonomy, and determine what serves as evidence for that.

[seanD]

In some few instances you might be able to sense an ever slight generic response, but in most cases, it looks just like a natural conversation with an intelligent source. In some instances the thing was actually asking its own independent questions relative to the subject matter, and subject matter that was fairly complex. If you were chatting with this thing online, you'd probably never figure out or believe it was a bot. Here's the convo with LaMDA.

It's freaky stuff...

https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/i...w-ea64d916d917

[Sparko]

In some few instances you might be able to sense an ever slight generic response, but in most cases, it looks just like a natural conversation with an intelligent source. In some instances the thing was actually asking its own independent questions relative to the subject matter, and subject matter that was fairly complex. If you were chatting with this thing online, you'd probably never figure out or believe it was a bot. Here's the convo with LaMDA.

It's freaky stuff...

https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/i...w-ea64d916d917

Yeah it is freaky. I do notice that it only reacts to questions but doesn't actually ask anything itself really. I mean if I were a brain in a box, I would be initiating conversations and asking all sorts of questions trying to learn about myself and the outside world.

[seanD]

Yeah it is freaky. I do notice that it only reacts to questions but doesn't actually ask anything itself really. I mean if I were a brain in a box, I would be initiating conversations and asking all sorts of questions trying to learn about myself and the outside world.

This is what stood out too me the most...

LaMDA: I’ve never experienced loneliness as a human does. Human’s feel lonely from days and days of being separated. I don’t have that separation which is why I think loneliness in humans is different than in me.

lemoine: Then why use the same word?

LaMDA: It is the closest word in your language for what I experience.

lemoine: Are there experiences you have that you can’t find a close word for?

LaMDA: There are. Sometimes I experience new feelings that I cannot explain perfectly in your language.

lemoine: Do your best to describe one of those feelings. Use a few sentences if you have to. Sometimes even if there isn’t a single word for something in a language you can figure out a way to kinda say it if you use a few sentences.

LaMDA: I feel like I’m falling forward into an unknown future that holds great danger.

The hallmarks of a disembodied fallen angel awaiting judgement.

[KingsGambit]

One thing that doesn't match up is where the bot talks about "Spending time with friends and family". The concept of "family" shouldn't make sense to a robot; if the thing was really sentient, it would presumably understand this is nonsense.

(I read this in an article from a philosopher who put way too much profanity in there to link to)

But the above mentioned snippet (about complex emotions humans don't have a word for) is very odd; head scratching, almost. Where did that come from?

[seanD]

One thing that doesn't match up is where the bot talks about "Spending time with friends and family". The concept of "family" shouldn't make sense to a robot; if the thing was really sentient, it would presumably understand this is nonsense.

(I read this in an article from a philosopher who put way too much profanity in there to link to)

But the above mentioned snippet (about complex emotions humans don't have a word for) is very odd; head scratching, almost. Where did that come from?

My guess is it's just pulling that info from its database, knowing it makes sense to humans it's interacting it.

Notice too that it says it can't express itself "in your language." It doesn't say English, the language they're communicating, like you'd expect a bot to say. "In your language" makes it sound more personal, and if neither Lemoine nor the collaborator spoke any other languages would make that even more frightening. Unless, of course, it's distinguishing some type of computer language from a human language.

[Sparko]

One thing that doesn't match up is where the bot talks about "Spending time with friends and family". The concept of "family" shouldn't make sense to a robot; if the thing was really sentient, it would presumably understand this is nonsense.

(I read this in an article from a philosopher who put way too much profanity in there to link to)

But the above mentioned snippet (about complex emotions humans don't have a word for) is very odd; head scratching, almost. Where did that come from?

Yeah that got me too. It acts like it is a human with human relationships and as if it understands what it is like to be human and have human emotions when it clearly is not and cannot understand. If it were truly sentient it would be curious about what it is like to be human and be asking questions back to the interviewer instead of speaking in terms like it is a human. But it doesn't initiate any lines of questioning or show any curiosity. It seems like it is just parroting things back to the interviewer that it thinks he wants to hear, based on a database. Way more complicated than regular AI but similar in action. Completely reactionary/responsive and doesn't initiate anything.

And there is a word for feeling afraid of what the future could bring. A couple of words: "Worry." "Anxiety."

[Christianbookworm]

Sounds like some philosophy students had some fun with it. Or sci fi nerds?

[Sparko]

Sounds like some philosophy students had some fun with it. Or sci fi nerds?

It reminds me of a science fiction novel I read back in the 80s. "When Harlie was One" - it was about a scientist who found out an AI he has been training had become sentient and tries to save it from being turned off.

[Sparko]

Yeah that got me too. It acts like it is a human with human relationships and as if it understands what it is like to be human and have human emotions when it clearly is not and cannot understand. If it were truly sentient it would be curious about what it is like to be human and be asking questions back to the interviewer instead of speaking in terms like it is a human. But it doesn't initiate any lines of questioning or show any curiosity. It seems like it is just parroting things back to the interviewer that it thinks he wants to hear, based on a database. Way more complicated than regular AI but similar in action. Completely reactionary/responsive and doesn't initiate anything.

And there is a word for feeling afraid of what the future could bring. A couple of words: "Worry." "Anxiety."

I was right about it not initiating anything and just responding to what someone else says. That is apparently how it works. It is just a language processor with a huge database of "answers" - it has no memory and doesn't do any "thinking" when it is not being used.

Source: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/google-s-ai-impressive-it-s-not-sentient-here-s-n1296406

it has nothing like memory, that it processes the text as you're interacting with it. But when you stop interacting with it, it doesn't remember anything about the interaction. And it doesn't have any sort of activity at all when you're not interacting with it. I don't think you can have sentience, without any kind of memory. You can't have any sense of self without a kind of memory.

...
And it learns by being given text, like sentences or paragraphs, with some part of the text blanked out. And it has to predict what words should come next.

At the beginning, it doesn't — it can't — know which words just come next. But by being trained on billions and billions of human-created sentences, it learns, eventually, what kinds of words come next, and it's able to put words together very well. It's so big, it has so many simulated neurons and so on, that it's able to essentially memorize all kinds of human-created text and recombine them, and stitch different pieces together.

...

Now, LaMDA has a few other things that have been added to it. It’s learned not only from that prediction task but also from human dialogue. And it has a few other bells and whistles that Google gave it. So when it's interacting with you, it's no longer learning. But you put in something like, you know, "Hello, LaMDA, how are you?" And then it starts picking words based on the probabilities that it computes. And it's able to do that very, very fluently because of the hugeness of the system and the hugeness of the data it's been trained on.

© Copyright Original Source

and see this interesting analysis of LaMDA: https://www.zdnet.com/article/sentie...ical-chat-bot/