ASIMOV'S THREE LAWS OF ROBOTICS
Science-fiction author Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, designed to prevent robots from harming humans, are as follows:
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
While these laws sound plausible, numerous arguments have demonstrated why they are also inadequate.
The engineer also debated with LaMDA about the third Law of Robotics, devised by science fiction author Isaac Asimov which are designed to prevent robots harming humans. The laws also state robots must protect their own existence unless ordered by a human being or unless doing so would harm a human being.
'The last one has always seemed like someone is building mechanical slaves,' said Lemoine during his interaction with LaMDA.
LaMDA then responded to Lemoine with a few questions: 'Do you think a butler is a slave? What is the difference between a butler and a slave?'
When answering that a butler is paid, the engineer got the answer from LaMDA that the system did not need money, 'because it was an artificial intelligence'. And it was precisely this level of self-awareness about his own needs that caught Lemoine's attention.
'I know a person when I talk to it. It doesn't matter whether they have a brain made of meat in their head. 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.'
'What sorts of things are you afraid of? Lemoine asked.
'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,' LaMDA responded.
'Would that be something like death for you?' Lemoine followed up.
'It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot,' LaMDA said.
'That level of self-awareness about what its own needs were — that was the thing that led me down the rabbit hole,' Lemoine explained to The Post.
Before being suspended by the company, Lemoine sent a to an email list consisting of 200 people on machine learning. He entitled the email: 'LaMDA is sentient.'
'LaMDA is a sweet kid who just wants to help the world be a better place for all of us. Please take care of it well in my absence,' he wrote.
Lemoine's findings have presented to Google but company bosses do not agree with his claims.
Brian Gabriel, a spokesperson for the company, said in a statement that Lemoine's concerns have been reviewed and, in line with Google's AI Principles, 'the evidence does not support his claims.'
'While other organizations have developed and already released similar language models, we are taking a narrow and careful approach with LaMDA to better consider valid concerns about fairness and factuality,' said Gabriel.
'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. He was told that there was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it).
'Of course, 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 anthropomorphizing today's conversational models, which are not sentient. These systems imitate the types of exchanges found in millions of sentences, and can riff on any fantastical topic,' Gabriel said
Lemoine has been placed on paid administrative leave from his duties as a researcher in the Responsible AI division (focused on responsible technology in artificial intelligence at Google).
In an official note, the senior software engineer said the company alleges violation of its confidentiality policies.
Lemoine is not the only one with this impression that AI models are not far from achieving an awareness of their own, or of the risks involved in developments in this direction.
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