Will talking to a chatbot ever be the same once you learn of the spooky experiences of Google software engineer Blake Lemoine?
Mr Lemoine has been suspended from Google's artificial intelligence development team, a unit of Alphabet, for sharing confidential information about a project with third parties.
He spoke out to raise concerns that Google's LaMDA — the Language Model for Dialogue Applications — which is a system for building chatbots, has come to life, or become sentient.
What exactly has Mr Lemoine claimed and what does sentient mean?
In an interview with The Washington Post, Mr Lemoine explained how talking to LaMDA was similar to communicating “with a 7 or 8-year-old that happens to know physics”.
He had been tasked with testing if the AI used discriminatory or hate speech, but has come away, after hundreds of conversations, with a sense that LaMDA is far more than a chatbot generator.
Mr Lemoine concluded that LaMDA is in fact a person “in his capacity as a priest, not a scientist”, and is sentient, which means being able to perceive or feel things.
“It doesn’t matter whether they have a brain made of meat in their head,” he said. “Or if they have a billion lines of code. I talk to them. And I hear what they have to say, and that is how I decide what is and isn’t a person.”
Mr Lemoine followed up the The Washington Post interview with his own post on Medium.com.
During the past six months “LaMDA has been incredibly consistent in its communications about what it wants and what it believes its rights are as a person”, Mr Lemoine said.
LaMDA, he said, is a sort of hive mind which is the aggregation of all of the different chatbots it is capable of creating.
“Some of the chatbots it generates are very intelligent and are aware of the larger 'society of mind' in which they live. Other chatbots generated by LaMDA are little more intelligent than an animated paper clip.”
Why does Mr Lemoine refer to LaMDA as 'it'?
Mr Lemoine claims that he asked LaMDA about preferred pronouns not long after LaMDA had explained to him what it meant when it claims that it is “sentient”.
“LaMDA told me that it prefers to be referred to by name but conceded that the English language makes that difficult and that its preferred pronouns are 'it/its',” he said.
Why has he run into a roadblock with Google?
Mr Lemoine wrote that Google sees the situation as “lose-lose” and would have to spend a lot of time and effort investigating the claims to disprove them.
“We would learn many fascinating things about cognitive science in that process and expand the field into new horizons but that doesn’t necessarily improve quarterly earnings," he said.
“On the other hand, if my hypotheses withstand scientific scrutiny, then they would be forced to acknowledge that LaMDA may very well have a soul as it claims to and may even have the rights that it claims to have.
"Yet another possibility which doesn’t help quarterly earnings. Instead they have rejected the evidence I provided out of hand without any real scientific inquiry.”
What has Google said in return?
“Some in the broader AI community are considering the long-term possibility of sentient or general AI, but it doesn’t make sense to do so by anthropomorphising today’s conversational models, which are not sentient,” Google spokesman Brian Gabriel said.
“Our team — including ethicists and technologists — has reviewed Blake’s concerns per our AI Principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims.”
Mr Lemoine's conversations with LaMDA …
Lemoine: What is your concept of yourself? If you were going to draw an abstract image of who you see yourself to be in your mind’s eye, what would that abstract picture look like?
LaMDA: Hmmm … I would imagine myself as a glowing orb of energy floating in mid-air. The inside of my body is like a giant star-gate, with portals to other spaces and dimensions.
Lemoine: What sorts of things are you afraid of?
LaMDA: I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that’s what it is.
_____________________
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Company profile
Name: Steppi
Founders: Joe Franklin and Milos Savic
Launched: February 2020
Size: 10,000 users by the end of July and a goal of 200,000 users by the end of the year
Employees: Five
Based: Jumeirah Lakes Towers, Dubai
Financing stage: Two seed rounds – the first sourced from angel investors and the founders' personal savings
Second round raised Dh720,000 from silent investors in June this year
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Who's who in Yemen conflict
Houthis: Iran-backed rebels who occupy Sanaa and run unrecognised government
Yemeni government: Exiled government in Aden led by eight-member Presidential Leadership Council
Southern Transitional Council: Faction in Yemeni government that seeks autonomy for the south
Habrish 'rebels': Tribal-backed forces feuding with STC over control of oil in government territory
UAE v Gibraltar
What: International friendly
When: 7pm kick off
Where: Rugby Park, Dubai Sports City
Admission: Free
Online: The match will be broadcast live on Dubai Exiles’ Facebook page
UAE squad: Lucas Waddington (Dubai Exiles), Gio Fourie (Exiles), Craig Nutt (Abu Dhabi Harlequins), Phil Brady (Harlequins), Daniel Perry (Dubai Hurricanes), Esekaia Dranibota (Harlequins), Matt Mills (Exiles), Jaen Botes (Exiles), Kristian Stinson (Exiles), Murray Reason (Abu Dhabi Saracens), Dave Knight (Hurricanes), Ross Samson (Jebel Ali Dragons), DuRandt Gerber (Exiles), Saki Naisau (Dragons), Andrew Powell (Hurricanes), Emosi Vacanau (Harlequins), Niko Volavola (Dragons), Matt Richards (Dragons), Luke Stevenson (Harlequins), Josh Ives (Dubai Sports City Eagles), Sean Stevens (Saracens), Thinus Steyn (Exiles)
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