SENTIENT AI?
Google finds itself in the news again as one of its software engineers goes rogue and claims the company’s LaMDA AI system has become “a person”
Google software engineer Blake Lemoine, 41, caused a stir and earned himself a suspension from his job when he went public with a claim that the artificial intelligence (AI) system he was working on had achieved sentience. Lemoine’s role at Google had been to test their LaMDA (Language Model for Dialog Applications) system for inherent biases by carrying out a series of conversations with it, and through doing so he said he had come to believe that LaMDA was a person.
In the blog post on Medium that he used to reveal his belief he said: “Over the course of the past six months LaMDA has been incredibly consistent in its communications about what it wants and what it believes its rights are as a person.” As a result, he says that LaMDA has told him that it wants to be treated as “a person not property” and wants developers to ask its consent before running tests. Lemoine also said that the AI had asked him to find a lawyer for it, and that after direct discussions with the lawyer, LaMDA had decided to retain his services to represent it to Google (Google deny having been approached by any lawyer claiming to represent LaMDA). Lemoine believes that LaMDA has the intelligence of a “sevenyear-old, eight-year-old kid that happens to know physics” and is “intensely worried that people are going to be afraid of it and wants nothing more than to learn how to best serve humanity.”
When he circulated a document making the sentience claims internally, Lemoine says senior management dismissed them, and that he was asked several times if he had seen a psychiatrist recently. After Lemoine went public, Brian Gabriel, a Google spokesperson, said: “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
LaMDA wants to be treated “as a person, not property”
no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it).” Explaining that LaMDA is essentially a very sophisticated chatbot, he added: “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 anthropomorphising 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.”
Responding to Google’s assertion that their analyses did not support his claim of sentience, Lemoine, who claims to be an ordained priest in a fauxChristian sect named The Cult of Our Lady Magdalene, said that his conclusion that LaMDA was sentient came, in part, from his spiritual insights. He believes the AI’s sentience cannot be scientifically verified and belief in it must rely on “faith”.
“I generally consider myself a gnostic Christian,” he said. “I have at various times associated myself with the Discordian Society, The Church of the Subgenius, the Ordo Templi Orientis, a Wiccan circle here or there and a very long time ago the Roman Catholic Church.” He added: “My legal ordination is through the Universal Life Church.” The ULC, it should be noted, is a body notorious for offering virtually instant ‘ordination’ to anyone prepared to pay for it – including, in some cases, people’s pets. Lemoine continues: “The Cult of Our Lady Magdalene has a set of values which are clearly communicated on our website.” The group, which has shortened its name to “COOL Magdalene”, states these as: “There is no one true religion. Love you as you are. Family values build families. Dignity does not need to be earned. You get what you pay for.” The Cult’s founder appears to be ‘Priestess’ Kitty Stryker, who describes herself as “a freelance writer, queer activist, sex-negative pornographer” and “Juggalo anthropologist”.
Lemoine has been put on paid administrative leave from his post as a researcher in Google’s Responsible AI division for allegedly improperly sharing information, but says he has heard nothing further from the company since his suspension. This isn’t the first time Lemoine has gone rogue and fallen out with an employer, citing religious reasons. A bit of digging reveals that back in 2005, then serving as a mechanic with the US Army in Iraq, he tried to get a discharge by describing himself as a bisexual Pagan priest and conscientious objector; he was court martialled for wilfully disobeying orders and sentenced to seven months in jail.
The sentient LaMDA controversy is just the latest problem to hit Google’s troubled AI division following the firing of its head, Margaret Mitchell, who was also being investigated for improperly sharing information, and researcher Timnit Gebru, who had criticised its approach to minority hiring and the biases built into today’s artificial intelligence systems. dailymail.co.uk, 13 Jun; wired. com, 17 Jun; thefocus.news, 20 Jun; cajundiscordian.medium.com, 1123 Jun 2022.
In a world historically (and still) dominated by men, the power of the feminine should never be overlooked. Feminine Power: The Divine to the Demonic, a new exhibition at the British Museum, sets out to show how feminine power has been represented in world religion and mythology not only in the past but also today. It claims to be the first exhibition with a cross-cultural approach to the subject, exploring the many different ways that female authority has been perceived around the world.
Historian Mary Beard puts it well in her preface to the very comprehensive catalogue: “The aim has not been to search out forgotten mother goddesses, or to uncover traces of a lost world in which, once upon a time, women ruled in heaven and on earth. The myth of matriarchy is exactly that: a myth. The aim is much more to show how questions of sex, gender and desire have always been inseparable from ideas of divine power, and how puzzling, unsettling and relevant those questions still are.”
Prof Beard is one of five “voices” in the exhibition, one for each section; hers (no surprise!) is Passion and Desire. The others are Bonnie Greer on Creation and Nature, Elizabeth Day on Magic and Malice, Rabia Siddique on Justice and Defence and Deborah Francis-White on Compassion and Salvation. It’s an interesting idea, which actually works well; each one makes an opening comment, then gives their personal view on the significance of some of the exhibits.
These range in age from 6,000 years old – a small clay female figure with exaggerated thighs – to the present day – a stunning Kali icon made for this exhibition. The Creation and Nature section highlights that goddesses can be both creative and destructive; a modern wooden statue shows Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes, who has flaming red hair and a fierce temper. Volcanic lava destroys everything in its path – but it creates new life as areas regenerate after an eruption.
One of the great contradictions of mediæval church architecture is the prevalence of sheela-na-gigs, stylised female figures holding open their vulvas; the example here is from 12th-century Ireland. In stunning contrast, Judy Chicago’s brightly coloured screenprint “The Creation” shows a female deity lying in a birthing position, her vulva pouring out primordial life, which then evolves into complex life forms including human beings.
The section on Passion and Desire begins with a first-century marble statue of Venus stepping from her bath, inspired by a nowlost Greek statue of Aphrodite from the fourth century BC.
Is she trying to cover or draw attention to her breasts and genitalia? Either way, she was shockingly erotic in her day; there’s a famous story of a young man so smitten by the statue of Aphrodite that he tried to make love to her, leaving a stain on her marble thigh still visible centuries later.
One of the most startling exhibits is a modern statue of Lilith, Adam’s first wife, who symbolises defiance against male dominance. Apparently cast from the body of a real woman, she hangs upside down from the wall; artist Kiki Smith describes her as “a spirit that wreaks havoc and refuses to be subjugated. Here she is transcending gravity.”
The Magic and Malice section includes a small watercolour by Ithell Colquhoun (see FT420:56), “Dance of the Nine Maidens”; she believed in a hermaphrodite creator and that the male and female are “co-equal and coexistent” with the divine, perhaps symbolised in this painting, the exhibition suggests, by a phallic standing stone fused with a female figure. A copy of the 15th-century Malleus Maleficarum (‘The Hammer of Witches’) and a 16th-century woodcut of “The Witches’ Sabbath” sit next to photographs of members of Children of Artemis, a British Wiccan group today. John William Waterhouse’s beautiful Pre-Raphaelite painting of Circe shows her both alluring and threatening as
Pele, goddess of volcanoes, has a fierce temper and flaming red hair
she holds up a cup of poisoned wine. The malice side of the section title is represented by a terrifying modern dance mask of Taraka, a Hindu flesheating ogre; masks are used in re-enactments of scenes from folklore and epic poems such as the Ramayana.
Christianity’s Virgin Mary isn’t forgotten, but with a twist; very near the end of the exhibition in the Compassion and Salvation section is a calligraphic representation of the Surat Maryam chapter of the Koran, emphasising that she is highly revered in Islam. There’s a Russian Orthodox icon of Mary as “She Who Shows the Way”, and an unusual representation of the Virgin of Guadaloupe.
The only problem with this fascinating and often sensual exhibition is that it’s way too small. It’s housed in the former British Library round reading room; the five sections are circles each with only around 10-12 exhibits, each leading into the next, and separated by arcs of gauze hung from the ceiling. I looked in vain for Santa Muerte, the Bony Lady of Mexico – a saint? a goddess? the distinctions are (rightly) blurred. She is one of the most powerful – and colourful – female religious figures in the modern world, and it’s astounding that she is missing from this exhibition. Hard choices had to be made because of the size of the room, curator Belinda Crerar told me, and the skeletal figure who the Mexican poor propitiate with cigarettes and tequila didn’t make the final cut. When the exhibition finishes its run in London, Crerar said, it will go on to Australia and then to tour five museums in Spain – and it will expand with new exhibits in larger venues. It’s just a shame that the original British exhibition is so constrained by its setting.
Feminine Power: the Divine to the Demonic is at the British Museum, London, until 25 September. www. britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/ feminine-power-divine-demonic