Sentient AI? Do we really care?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) headlined the news recently when a Google engineer named Blake Lemoine became convinced that a software program was sentient. The program, Language Models for Dialog Applications (LaMDA), is a chatbot designed to mimic human conversation. So that’s what it did.

In a Medium post, Lemoine declared LaMDA had advocated for its rights “as a person,” and wants “to be acknowledged as an employee of Google rather than as property of Google.” This development, as they now say, blew up the internet. Philosophers, ethicists, and theologians weighed in.

For engineers and technologists, however, it’s just another illustration of the overly broad and frustratingly mushy definition of “artificial intelligence” that has confused the public conversation since Mary Shelley published Frankenstein. As always, defining terms is a good place to start. Sentience is the ability to feel and experience sensation. It’s a word invented specifically to distinguish from the ability to think. Therefore, “sentience” and “intelligence” are not synonyms. Google may very well have created an intelligence. In fact, Google and numerous other companies including my employer, SAIC, already have. But absent the biological prerequisite of a central nervous system, they are not sentient, even if they pass Alan Turing’s famous Imitation Game test of seeming human.

But more to the point, for engineering applications, the question of sentience is not immediately relevant. The real question is one of application. What can AI — the practice of infusing machines with the capacity to perform analysis and make evidence-based recommendations previously believed to be the exclusive purview of humans — actually do to enhance business performance, to drive better mission outcomes, to improve the world? Waves of data fog our view; what can the clarifying lens of AI help us see?

Hindsight: If, as George Santayana said, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, then lessons derived from historical data inoculate us from future mistakes. By crunching mountains of data from myriad inputs, AI can leverage real world, real-time experience to allow leaders to confidently make plans and install course corrections. AI can provide dashboard views without the hassle of Oracle queries, data calls, and spreadsheets to underscore comparisons quickly and without knowledge gaps.  

Foresight: When will a hurricane make landfall? Where will a satellite in decaying orbit re-enter the atmosphere? How often will an offshore wind turbine require maintenance? AI is already at work providing predictive answers to grand engineering questions formerly addressed by a ghastly gaggle of guesswork.

Insight: AI is not a replacement for human judgment, but it can and does recommend action by computing conditional probability of multiple scenarios. Result: business decisions statistically more likely to succeed. This is especially useful in crisis situations — such as a global epidemic — when stakes are high, precedents are few, and decisions are quick.

Oversight: Analog methods always have struggled with organizing complex and sensitive data from many sources at various clearance levels. Because interoperability and oversight are essential in defense and intelligence agencies, where missions require the ability to co-locate large amounts of both confidential data and open-source intelligence, AI is certain to play a growing role in battlespace decisions.    

Rightsight: Even the best data analyst can’t connect all the dots simultaneously. Yet missions often depend on surfacing granular data immediately. Imagine a soldier on the battlefield armed with essential intel in an instant. Deep machine learning fueled by AI provides amplified intelligence so users can act quickly and accurately, bringing each of the “sights” together to operate as one. 

AI algorithms can work harmoniously to achieve efficiency and modernize legacy systems. This human-machine partnership already is underway and is to be embraced, not feared. When machines drive digital transformation and empower human innovation, everyone wins. 

So, leave the question of sentience to the poets. Those of us focused on the science of the mission rather than science fiction will leverage the burgeoning power of AI to simply get the job done.

Jay Meil is Data Science Director for Artificial Intelligence at the defense technology firm SAIC.