Nothing can be as authentic as people

Recently, Google sidelined software engineer and employee Blake Lemoine after he claimed that the company’s artificial intelligence chatbot, LaMDA, was sentient, it had become conscious. Among other things, it had told him it had read Les Miserables and meditated daily.

Was it the first sign that AI could evolve machines that are so authentic that they’re human? That depends on the authenticity of Lemoine’s claims of course, all of which have been strongly denied by his employer.

But even if it had read Les Mis and become reflective, there were two things that hit my desk that suggest LaMDA has a long way to go to reach the heights of human authenticity.

The first was the speech by celebrity actor, Matthew McConaughey, a gun owner who berated senators over their inaction on gun control. While clearly protective of his 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, his was an emotion-charged appeal for action. He brilliantly reframed the “gun control problem” as a “life preservation problem”, itself defined by the context of the rights of children to a future.

It would be easy for critics to dismiss this as the controlled performance of an accomplished actor. But it wasn’t.

McConaughey read from prepared notes to ensure he communicated his key messages, something that could easily be lost in the emotion and empathy of an atrocity and tragedy literally close to home. But it was clear that its occurrence in his home town, impacting people - friends and families - within his community in Uvalde, Texas was deeply personal.

While his fame assured that his message would be heard globally, an equally effective and authentic speech from the Principal of North Sydney’s Wenona School was published in the Australian Financial Review.

Dr Briony Scott accused the nation’s politicians and education commentators of trivialising the roles and responsibilities of teachers, bastardising their profession and overlooking their contribution. She said we have a generation of politicians who see the world in black and white and have no comprehension as to the complexity of the school “ecosystem”.

Dr Briony Scott, Principal, Wenona School. Photo: mylifehouse.org.au

Being the Principal of one of the nation’s exclusive schools is usually means remaining at a discreet distance from controversy and the public spotlight. Stakeholder issues are dealt with behind closed doors, the content of conversations secured against public scrutiny and comment.

But Dr Scott’s article was borne of frustration with ill-informed public debate about falling school standards, the ‘wokeness’ of curricular and the poor performance of under-pressure teachers. Her article documented the numerous unpaid and unrecognised roles performed by teachers - counselling and protecting students exposed to physical and online bullying, providing occasional medical support for students:

“I’ve ridden in far too many ambulances to count, counselled warring parents, dealt on the front line with medical issues, accidents, alcoholism, mental health, breakdowns, suicide, domestic violence, murder, bankruptcy, unemployment, homelessness, and couch-surfing primary school students. Tell me again, how to do my job,” she said.

McConaughey and Scott have little in common other than their authenticity on the events and issues that matter to them. Their communications were powerful because they drew on their human experience, emotion and connectedness.They were sentient.

I suspect that Google’s LaMDA has a long way to go before coming anywhere close to it.

Header photo by Alexander Sinn on Unsplash