I only make sense of myself insofar as I live in, and relate to, a community of other thinking, feeling, talking beings. Meaning for humans comes through our existence as social beings. What matters is not just the outside of a string of symbols, but its inside too, not just the syntax but the semantics. When we communicate, we communicate meaning.
For humans, however, unlike for computers, meaning is everything. Humans, in thinking and talking and reading and writing, also manipulate symbols. But in what sense has LaMDA ever spent “time with family”? It has been programmed well enough to recognise that this would be a meaningful sentence for humans and an eloquent response to the question it was asked without it ever being meaningful to itself. We do find joy in “spending time with friends and family”. It’s a response that makes perfect sense to a human. In one of Lemoine’s conversations with LaMDA, he asked it: “What kinds of things make you feel pleasure or joy?” To which it responded: “Spending time with friends and family in happy and uplifting company.” Nevertheless, a large language model such as LaMDA, trained on the extraordinary amount of text that is online, can become adept at recognising patterns and responses meaningful to humans. But it does not specify what those symbols mean. Its program specifies a set of rules, or algorithms, to transform one string of symbols into another. LaMDA, he adds, “ simply isn’t”.Ī computer manipulates symbols. The cognitive scientist Gary Marcus describes sentience as being “aware of yourself in the world”. It is often conflated with similarly ill-defined concepts such as consciousness, self-consciousness, self-awareness and intelligence.
Sentience is one of those concepts the meaning of which we can intuitively grasp but is difficult to formulate in scientific terms. But religious conviction does not turn what is in reality a highly sophisticated chatbot into a sentient being. Lemoine is entitled to his religious beliefs. The trouble is: “There is no scientific framework in which to make those determinations.” So, instead: “My opinions about LaMDA’s personhood and sentience are based on my religious beliefs.” Meaning for humans comes through our existence as social beings “People keep asking me to back up the reason I think LaMDA is sentient,” he tweeted. Why does Lemoine think that LaMDA is sentient? He doesn’t know.