Machine sentience and you: what happens when machine learning goes too far
There’s always some truth in fiction, and now is about the time to get a step ahead of sci-fi dystopias and determine what the risk in machine sentience can be for humans.
Although people have long pondered the future of intelligent machinery, such questions have become all the more pressing with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learningT. These machines resemble human interactions: they can help problem solve, create content, and even carry on conversations. For fans of science fiction and dystopian novels, a looming issue could be on the horizon: what if these machines develop a sense of consciousness?
Researchers published their results in the Journal of Social Computing on December 31, 2023.
While there is no quantifiable data presented in this discussion on artificial sentience (AS) in machines, there are many parallels drawn between human language development and the factors needed for machines to develop language in a meaningful way.
“Many of the people concerned with the possibility of machine sentience developing worry about the ethics of our use of these machines, or whether machines, being rational calculators, would attack humans to ensure their own survival,” said John Levi Martin, author and researcher. “We here are worried about them catching a form of self-estrangement by transitioning to a specifically linguistic form of sentience.”
The main characteristics making such a transition possible appear to be: unstructured deep learning, such as in neural networks (computer analysis of data and training examples to provide better feedback), interaction between both humans and other machines, and a wide range of actions to continue self-driven learning. An example of this would be self-driving cars. Many forms of AI check these boxes already, leading to the concern of what the next step in their “evolution” might be.
This discussion states that it’s not enough to be concerned with just the development of AS in machines, but raises the question of if we’re fully prepared for a type of consciousness to emerge in our machinery. Right now, with AI that can generate blog posts, diagnose an illness, create recipes, predict diseases or tell stories perfectly tailored to its inputs, it’s not far off to imagine having what feels like a real connection with a machine that has learned of its state of being. However, researchers of this study warn, that is exactly the point at which we need to be wary of the outputs we receive.
“Becoming a linguistic being is more about orienting to the strategic control of information, and introduces a loss of wholeness and integrity…not something we want in devices we make responsible for our security,” said Martin. As we’ve already put AI in charge of so much of our information, essentially relying on it to learn much in the way a human brain does, it has become a dangerous game to play when entrusting it with so much vital information in an almost reckless way.
Mimicking human responses and strategically controlling information are two very separate things. A “linguistic being” can have the capacity to be duplicitous and calculated in their responses. An important element of this is, at what point do we find out we’re being played by the machine?
What’s to come is in the hands of computer scientists to develop strategies or protocols to test machines for linguistic sentience. The ethics behind using machines that have developed a linguistic form of sentience or sense of “self” are yet to be fully established, but one can imagine it would become a social hot topic. The relationship between a self-realized person and a sentient machine is sure to be complex, and the uncharted waters of this type of kinship would surely bring about many concepts regarding ethics, morality and the continued use of this “self-aware” technology.
Maurice Bokanga, Alessandra Lembo and John Levi Martin of the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago contributed to this research.
About Journal of Social Computing
Journal of Social Computing (JSC) is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal which aims to publish high-quality, original research that pushes the boundaries of thinking, findings, and designs at the dynamic interface of social interaction and computation. This will include research in （1）computational social science—the use of computation to learn from the explosion of social data becoming available today; (2) complex social systems or the analysis of how dynamic, evolving social collectives constitute emergent computers to solve their own problems; and (3) human computer interaction whereby machines and persons recursively combine to generate unique knowledge and collective intelligence, or the intersection of these areas. The editorial board welcomes research from fields ranging across the social sciences, computer and information sciences, physics and ecology, communications and linguistics, and, indeed, any field or approach that can challenge and advance our understanding of the interface and integration of computation and social life. We seek to take risks, avoid boredom and court failure on the path to transformative new paradigms, insights, and possibilities. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms, methodologies and applications.
About SciOpen
SciOpen is a professional open access resource for discovery of scientific and technical content published by the Tsinghua University Press and its publishing partners, providing the scholarly publishing community with innovative technology and market-leading capabilities. SciOpen provides end-to-end services across manuscript submission, peer review, content hosting, analytics, and identity management and expert advice to ensure each journal’s development by offering a range of options across all functions as Journal Layout, Production Services, Editorial Services, Marketing and Promotions, Online Functionality, etc. By digitalizing the publishing process, SciOpen widens the reach, deepens the impact, and accelerates the exchange of ideas.
JOURNAL
Journal of Social Computing
ARTICLE TITLE
Through a Scanner Darkly: Machine Sentience and the Language Virus
Perspective paper explores the debate over sentient machines
Focuses on sentience and its applications to AI and robotics
Peer-Reviewed PublicationA researcher from the New Jersey Institute of Technology has published a perspective paper that examines sentience and its application to artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Sentience describes the ability to sense and feel, drawing its meaning from the Latin word sentire which means “to feel.” The paper addresses a set of ideological commitments at stake in debates over sentient machines. The author proposes that artificial sentience is both necessary and impossible.
The perspective paper is published in the Journal of Social Computing on December 31, 2023.
“I argue that these ideological commitments, which I call the AIdeal, create a situation where artificial sentience is both necessary and impossible. To better understand this impasse, I look at historical and contemporary discourse on artificial sentience in order to make the ideological background of the debate explicit,” said Daniel Estrada, a university lecturer at New Jersey Institute of Technology. The AIdeal is an ideological framework that implicitly structures the discourse on artificial sentience, AI, and thinking machines.
To describe this framework, Estrada reviews the historical discourse on sentience as it appears in ancient, early modern, and 20th century philosophy. He pays special attention to how these ideals are projected onto artificial agents. In AI, agents are computer programs or systems that perceive their environment and then take actions to accomplish some goal.
Estrada begins by examining sentience as an ancient tradition used to mark the distinction between plants and animals. Sentience is the capacity for sensation. So sentient creatures are sensitive to changes in their world. Some researchers apply sensitivity to environmental change in the broadest possible sense. Their definition might include the whole of the universe, with every molecule and particle that somehow reacts with its environment. However, most researchers use the word sentience in a more restrictive way. So the debate over sentience focuses on where to place the restrictions and draw the boundaries in the definition.
Estrada argues that tensions among these ideals result in a crisis of ideology because of the conditions where artificial sentience is both necessary and impossible. To move past this crisis does not mean that a satisfying resolution among the competing ideals has been achieved. Rather, it requires researchers to shift their focus to the material conditions and actual practices in which these ideals operate.
Estrada follows the philosopher Charles Mills in sketching a nonideal approach to AI and artificial sentience, with a looser grip on the ideology of the discourse. Estrada proposes an idea of participation that deflates the sentience discourse in AI and shifts the focus instead to the material conditions in which sociotechnical networks operate.
Artificial sentience has never been a stable goal that scientists can pursue in some objective sense, for example, in the way scientists might attempt to land on the Moon or cure cancer. On the contrary, the discourse on artificial sentience looks more like an endless hallway or a carrot on a stick, where the goals are always just over the horizon.
As Estrada explains, if scientists could somehow fix the goalposts in this debate to match the ideals of earlier generations, it might reveal dozens of Moon-landing scale events of technical achievement in the last fifty years. These might easily convince Aristotle, Descartes, or even Turing that an artifact had achieved sentience. “Put simply, the prospect of artificial sentience depends less on what artifacts do, and much more on what we believe about them. That’s the AIdeal,” said Estrada.
Looking ahead, Estrada believes that this paper only begins to explain the ideological structure of the AI discourse. He would like to expand the discussion to cover other important areas. For example, Estrada would like to talk about the questions in the philosophy of language in the 20th century, and how this influences current debates over whether chatbots like chatGPT can “understand” language. “Filling out this picture will contribute to ongoing debates on these important issues,” said Estrada.
Daniel Estrada is a university lecturer at the Department of Humanities and Social Science at New Jersey Institute of Technology.
About Journal of Social Computing
Journal of Social Computing (JSC) is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal which aims to publish high-quality, original research that pushes the boundaries of thinking, findings, and designs at the dynamic interface of social interaction and computation. This will include research in （1）computational social science—the use of computation to learn from the explosion of social data becoming available today; (2) complex social systems or the analysis of how dynamic, evolving social collectives constitute emergent computers to solve their own problems; and (3) human computer interaction whereby machines and persons recursively combine to generate unique knowledge and collective intelligence, or the intersection of these areas. The editorial board welcomes research from fields ranging across the social sciences, computer and information sciences, physics and ecology, communications and linguistics, and, indeed, any field or approach that can challenge and advance our understanding of the interface and integration of computation and social life. We seek to take risks, avoid boredom and court failure on the path to transformative new paradigms, insights, and possibilities. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms, methodologies and applications.
About SciOpen
SciOpen is a professional open access resource for discovery of scientific and technical content published by the Tsinghua University Press and its publishing partners, providing the scholarly publishing community with innovative technology and market-leading capabilities. SciOpen provides end-to-end services across manuscript submission, peer review, content hosting, analytics, and identity management and expert advice to ensure each journal’s development by offering a range of options across all functions as Journal Layout, Production Services, Editorial Services, Marketing and Promotions, Online Functionality, etc. By digitalizing the publishing process, SciOpen widens the reach, deepens the impact, and accelerates the exchange of ideas.
JOURNAL
Journal of Social Computing
ARTICLE TITLE
AIdeal: Sentience and Ideology
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