Achieving Sentience in the Workplace

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What It’s About: Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations. This week, I read about two workplaces at the opposite end of the sentience journey. Amazingly (and with much controversy), some claim that Google’s LaMDA, a machine-learning model, trained on copious amounts of text to mimic human conversation by predicting which words would, typically, come next, has achieved sentience. Yikes! And like OpenAI’s GPT-3 bot, the results really are eerie. LaMDA converses with spooky inducing, human insight and feelings. While there is debate as to whether the machine has actually achieved sentience, there is NO doubt that those who have experienced interacting with LaMDA, find it unsettling.

So What?: While incredible AI/ML and exceptional engineers are moving machines closer to sentience, real people continue to demonstrate the lack of any human feeling and act more like cold machines. Example: Terry Jones, has one of Canada’s most extensive and celebrated journalism resumes. Over 50 years, he has magnificently covered 20 Super Bowls, a Canadian record 16 Olympics, countless Edmonton Oilers games, Grey Cups, and various other sporting events around the globe.This hall of famer, until recently, was an employee of the media conglomerate, Post Media. How does his career end? With a cold, machine like phone call. “My last scoop,” Terry Jones tweeted on Wednesday afternoon. “At 1 p.m. today, after beginning my career at The Edmonton Journal in 1967, I received a phone call from Toronto informing me my position had been eliminated by Post Media. Thank you all so much for reading. Hardly the way I hoped it would end.”

Now What?: 50 years of dedicated service deserves more than a cold phone call with immediate termination. What kind of people run Post Media? Maybe it’s run by machines less sophisticated than LaMDA? Post Media certainly has the right to make personnel decisions but WTF! Jonesy, as he is affectionately referred to ,certainly earned the right to have a voice in HOW he might leave in a classy, dignified way. But no… Some insensitive turds, probably from HR, call to say “you’re done today.” If Jonsey hadn’t answered his phone, it probably would have been a voicemail or text termination.

All of us will have a last day at work. Why can’t we learn to make that “leave” a dignified experience? LaMDA, please help us humans be more human .

Think Big, Start Small, Act Now,

- Lorne

One Millennial View: I think we should probably completely unplug LaMDA and take a baseball bat to its servers, because I’m interested in preserving as much humanity as possible, and the values that come with it. Although we hear about mental health, stress, etc. a lot, to me, it’s becoming clearer that we might have a serious morality problem. These examples of cold machine behavior could be a symptom of that.

- Garrett

Edited and published by Garrett Rubis.

Achieving Sentience in the Workplace

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