A Stunning New AI Has Supposedly Achieved Sentience
In March of 2024, U.S.-based AI company Anthropic released Claude 3, an update to its powerful large language model AI. Its immense capabilities, especially some introspection during testing, left some wondering if Claude 3 had reached a certain level of self-awareness, or even sentience. While Claude 3’s abilities are impressive, they’re still a reflection of the AI’s (admittedly) remarkable ability to identify patterns, and lacks the important intelligence criteria to match human sentience.
The Hype Cycle of AI Large Language Models
AI large language models (LLMs)—such as Chat GPT, Claude, and Gemini (formerly Bard)—appear to go through a predictable hype cycle. Posts trickle out about a new model’s impressive capabilities, people are floored by the model’s sophistication (or experience existential dread over losing their jobs), and, if you’re lucky, someone starts claiming that this new-and-improved LLM is displaying signs of sentience.
The Latest Update: Claude 3
This hype cycle is currently in full force for Claude 3, an LLM created by the U.S.-based AI company Anthropic. In early March, the company introduced its latest lineup of AI models, Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3 Sonnet, and Claude 3 Opus—all in ascending order of capability. The new models delivered updates across the board, including near-perfect recall, less hallucinations (a.k.a. incorrect answers), and quicker response times.
“Opus, our most intelligent model, outperforms its peers on most of the common evaluation benchmarks for AI systems, including undergraduate level expert knowledge (MMLU), graduate level expert reasoning (GPQA), basic mathematics (GSM8K), and more,” Anthropic wrote in its announcement release. “It exhibits near-human levels of comprehension and fluency on complex tasks, leading the frontier of general intelligence.”
Insights and Reactions
Following the announcement, AI experts shared their thoughts on social media platforms, and detailed some pretty impressive results. As Live Science details, one expert compared how quickly Claude 3 could summarize a 42-page PDF to another AI model.
The Quest for Artificial General Intelligence
While the advancements in AI, exemplified by Claude 3, are impressive, they do not signify the attainment of artificial general intelligence (AGI) or sentience. Researchers and experts emphasize the distinction between the capabilities of AI models and the comprehensive intelligence exhibited by humans.
One prevailing theory posits that achieving AGI entails mastering various intelligences beyond learned behaviors and data analysis. While AI models like Claude demonstrate exceptional performance in specific tasks, they do not encompass the full spectrum of human intelligence.
Humans, for now, remain the most intelligent beings on Earth. However, the development of AI tools like Claude 3 illustrates the potential for collaboration between humans and AI in navigating complex challenges.
