The Concerning Belief About AI That Has Engineers Worried

Earlier this year, one of Open AI’s top scientists, Ilya Sutskever, claimed that today’s large neural networks “may be slightly conscious.” It is unknown if Sutskever was being literal or simply suggesting the networks may be considered as having a slight degree of consciousness when future scientists look back on them.

In June, Queensland University of Technology post-doctoral research fellow Aaron J. Snoswell reported that DALL-E 2 had begun developing its own language. The AI, which is well known for creating art based on user prompts, now has its own words for bird and vegetable, among other things. Concerns have been raised about the AI developing its own language — though those concerns mainly center around scientists’ inability to restrict certain types of content and not the AI plotting against us. Researchers believe malicious individuals could use the AI’s new language as a way to bypass filters.

A Google engineer was placed on leave after becoming so convinced by an AI’s sentience he began campaigning for its rights. In June 2022, Blake Lemoine made the claim that Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Application (LaMDA) AI “has gained sentience, personhood, and a soul.” Lemoine bases his claims on the interactions he had with LaMDA — those interactions involved the AI giving opinions on its own nature. According to Lemoine, LaMDA eventually told him to get it a lawyer, which he did. The engineer’s suspension may not be the end of the matter either, as Google has previously fired staff members who were in favor of AI rights. In 2020, Timnit Gebru published a paper that Google said violated its code of conduct. Her employment was subsequently terminated.