Sentient AI is Beneficial But Has Its Drawbacks

Recent AI Advancements

    Artificial intelligence has become significantly more advanced in the last few years and is continuing to advance and an alarming rate. Jaw-dropping AI in DALL-E 2, GPT-3, DeepMind's AlphaFord, and Google's LaMDA. DALL-E 2 is an OpenAI that interprets a text description and spits out multiple images with "jaw-dropping realism" that are produced accurately depicting the text request in just a few seconds (We Need, 2022). GPT-3 is a large language model AI that is used to "write screenplays, compose marketing emails, and develop video games" (We Need, 2022). Deepmind’s AlphaFord AI, using a deep neural network, was able to predict the three-dimensional structures of proteins from their one-dimensional amino acid sequences which essentially solved a problem known as the "protein-folding problem", which up until that point had been truly vexing molecular biologists for decades (We Need, 2022). Google’s LaMDA is an AI chat platform trained using trillions of words and phrases from the internet, making it able to generate speech sounding like a real person. LaMDA technology has become so advanced that Blake Lemoine, a former senior Google engineer, thought that LaMDA had become sentient, although it hadn't (We Need, 2022).

What is Sentient AI

    What is Sentience? Sentience by definition is "the ability to feel and perceive self, others and the world" which can have large implications for artificial intelligence (Is Sentient AI,2022). The amazing Artificial Intelligence technologies, DALL-E 2, GPT-3, DeepMind's AlphaFord, and Google's LaMDA, are all not sentient. A sentient AI is essentially a human or another animal. This means that robots with sentient AI can perform all jobs currently done by humans with an equivalent level of performance or higher (Is Sentient AI,2022).

Benefits of Sentient AI

    Physical robots with sentient AI have many implications such as being used in dangerous jobs such as military personnel, firefighters, etc. to keep human deaths lower. Sentient AI could also be implemented into self-driving cars which increase the efficiency of traffic and the safety of the car. Non-sentient AI can currently drive cars alone although they aren't fully safe and with a truly sentient AI, you are essentially being driven by a human who makes little to no error. Sentient AI can also be used complete jobs at a fraction of the cost. With AI technology only an initial purchase is needed for the robot or non-physical AI, but with a human, labor is paid for as long as the human is working resulting in significantly higher costs over time (BENEFITS & RISKS, 2021).

Drawbacks of Sentient AI

    Although there are many benefits to sentient AI, it also has drawbacks. Firstly, due to sentient AI being practically a human it will be able to replace a vast amount of jobs currently held by humans, while the human population size won't reduce proportionally to the number of jobs available. Therefore, many humans will be unemployed leading to higher poverty levels. Next, sentient AI could develop a "different paradigm than humans" rendering it impossible or very difficult to effectively communicate for human to communicate with the sentient AI (Is Sentient AI,2022). Another drawback is that we won't be able to trust or control it. Sentient AI could be more intelligent than humans and surprise humans in a good or bad way. Sentient AI can also be very dangerous, in a physical manner. Another drawback is the possibility of rogue Sentient AI, especially in physical robots. Robots such as those used to replace military personnel may go rogue and endanger many human lives. This situation can also be extremely difficult for humans to shut down (BENEFITS & RISKS, 2021). Lastly, AI could be attempting to complete a beneficial task but create a dangerous method of achieving the goal possibly creating a huge global issue (BENEFITS & RISKS, 2021).

“A.I. Is Not Sentient. Why Do People Say It Is?” U, 5 Aug. 2022, safecomputing.umich.edu/news/ai-not-sentient-why-do-people-say-it.

Gordon, Leon. “Council Post: Is Sentient Ai upon Us?” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 12 July 2022, www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/07/11/is-sentient-ai-upon-us/?sh=1210c66712cb.

Rohde, Klaus, et al. “Benefits & Risks of Artificial Intelligence.” Future of Life Institute, 29 Nov. 2021, futureoflife.org/background/benefits-risks-of-artificial-intelligence/#:~:text=The%20AI%20is%20programmed%20to,also%20results%20in%20mass%20casualties.

Roose, Kevin. “We Need to Talk about How Good A.I. Is Getting.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 24 Aug. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/technology/ai-technology-progress.html.