I recall a novel in which a crack team of solipsist terrorists are fearless because each of them believes, since they are all that there is, they are immortal. They are therefore, for the sake of the novel, indomitable.

Sounds interesting. I take it they're also fine with being amoral.

I took the "zombie" name in "all you zombies" to be that everyone except the main character is descended from the dead.

Why aren't there more Heinlein stories on the screen?

Ah, that would make sense. Predestination is the movie name of that story. And the tv show Dark is Predestination on steroids in a German setting. But yeah, there should be more Heinlein screen stories.

Lazarus Long would make an excellent Netflix series.

Instead folk do yet another rendering of Dune.

Netflix could use more excellent series at this point.

When one is asleep and having a dream, even though one might interact with characters and things in the dream those characters are just projections of the dreamers mind. All that really exists in the dream is the dreamer, although it may not appear that way. Is this not a form of solipsism?

It one were to apply this concept to the "real" world, then one can consider this reality to be someone's dream and either one is the dreamer or the dreamed. In either case it would be a form of solipsism. All interactions would be self interactions. Ultimately i think the nature of the universe may hold a very similar quality to this idea. We may all be manifested aspects of the universal dreamer, in the dream we call reality.

Catch-22: I want to avoid going on dangerous air sorties want to avoid being recognized as (true) AI. So, I want to be declared unfit for duty want to be declared as not (true) AI. However me wanting to be declared unfit for duty wanting to be declared not (true) AI means I am fit (true) AI.

Predestination is the movie name of that story. — Marchesk

Thanks for that. Watched it last night and quite enjoyed it.

An Australian production, curiously.

What is time then? If nobody asks me, I know; but if I were desirous to explain it to one that should ask me, plainly I do not know. — St. Augustine

Vide Ludwig Wittgenstein, words are essentially essenceless.

Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know. — Laozi

What obligations, if any, have we towards LaMDA ? — Banno

I think, given my choice -- which is something I still think needs emphasis -- I'd have to say none.

However, if the best we have for determining when AI is sentient is a privately owned cadre of experts on computer technology and ethics being paid by the institution with a financial motive to keep, well -- a sentient worker they don't have to pay then it seems best to me that we not pursue the technology.

That's not good enough for a scenario where we would decide they'd count, given the opportunity ourselves to interact with it.

I think the situation is uncomfortable; that discomfort is worth noting. I don't think, given my general beliefs about the world, I'd experience LaMDA in the same way Lemoine did -- but it's discomforting to me that he's a target of ridicule because, really, how else do you "determine" if someone is a someone, and not a something?

At the most basic, even if it is a delusion: When do you see the rock with a face drawn on it as a face made of rock? Or, in the case of the psychopath, the flesh with a face drawn on.

It's a quasi-rational thing going on. Obviously we have cognitive thoughts, but there's something outside of our cognitive machinery going on when this flip happens.

And that's why the situation should be uncomfortable. Sure, this time, it seems I'm Ok with it -- but what happens when I'm not, and the same story gets printed?

Here's the conclusion we must make: the Turing Test is insufficient. — Banno

It is when I do it. But, in general, yes. You need a framework or you flounder.

I just think mine an honest assessment -- there isn't really much more to how I determine these things. I hardly even think if someone else is sentient, it's so automatic -- there's no inference involved at all. Especially in relation to proofs and all that. Perhaps it's not even a feeling. It's certainly not a judgment, ala Turing. Judgment, after all, is cognitive.

I'm tempted to say that others are involved, but that's not quite true -- that's the realm of judgment again, intersubjective.

But, at least as far as I see people behave, I and others don't seem to be in the habit of making judgments like these in the least. Whether Kate or the thermometer are someone isn't something I think about, until one asks me to do the thinking -- and then sentience, language, humanity.

But it's post-hoc.

And if you told me my kin were robots, I'd defend them all the same.


And without that honest assessment of how we currently think -- well, at least how I think -- I'm not sure how you'd proceed. It just seems like a philosophical trap.

It's a text transformer. I don't understand half of these replies. The engineer knew what it was and what his job was.You could probably reproduce that text on GPT-2. Actually got half the conversation using it.

You could easily use it to argue it wasn't sentient with the same ferocity.

However I want to add this technology while being "unconscious" text transformer technology is extremely dangerous. Potentially has the ability to undermine science itself. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02134-0 if this occurs we can expect progress to slow. Maybe this belongs in a separate thread.