US Business

An internal fight over whether Google built technology with human-like consciousness has spilled into the open, exposing the ambitions and risks inherent in artificial intelligence that can feel all too real.

The Silicon Valley giant suspended one of its engineers last week who argued the firm’s AI system LaMDA seemed “sentient,” a claim Google officially disagrees with.

Several experts told AFP they were also highly skeptical of the consciousness claim, but said human nature and ambition could easily confuse the issue.

“The problem is that… when we encounter strings of words that belong to the languages we speak, we make sense of them,” said Emily M. Bender, a linguistics professor at University of Washington.

“We are doing the work of imagining a mind that’s not there,” she added.

LaMDA is a massively powerful system that uses advanced models and training on over 1.5 trillion words to be able to mimic how people communicate in written chats. 

The system was built on a model that observes how words relate to one another and then predicts what words it thinks will come next in a sentence or paragraph, according to Google’s explanation.

“It’s still at some level just pattern matching,” said Shashank Srivastava, an assistant professor in computer science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“Sure you can find some strands of really what would appear meaningful conversation, some very creative text that they could generate. But it quickly devolves in many cases,” he added.

Still, assigning consciousness gets tricky. 

It has often involved benchmarks like the Turing test, which a machine is considered to have passed if a human has a written chat with one, but can’t tell.

“That’s actually a fairly easy test for any AI of our vintage here in 2022 to pass,” said Mark Kingwell, a University of Toronto philosophy professor.

“A tougher test is a contextual test, the kind of thing that current systems seem to get tripped up by, common sense knowledge or background ideas — the kinds of things that algorithms have a hard time with,” he added.

– ‘No easy answers’ –

AI remains a delicate topic in and outside the tech world, one that can prompt amazement but also a bit of discomfort. 

Google, in a statement, was swift and firm in downplaying whether LaMDA is self-aware.

“These systems imitate the types of exchanges found in millions of sentences, and can riff on any fantastical topic,” the company said.

“Hundreds of researchers and engineers have conversed with LaMDA and we are not aware of anyone else making… wide-ranging assertions, or anthropomorphizing LaMDA,” it added.

At least some experts viewed Google’s response as an effort to shut down the conversation on an important topic.

“I think public discussion of the issue is extremely important, because public understanding of how vexing the issue is, is key,” said academic Susan Schneider.

“There are no easy answers to questions of consciousness in machines,” added the founding director of the Center for the Future of the Mind at Florida Atlantic University.

Lack of skepticism by those working on the topic is also possible at a time when people are “swimming in a tremendous amount of AI hype,” as linguistics professor Bender put it. 

“And lots and lots of money is getting thrown at this. So the people working on it have this very strong signal that they’re doing something important and real” resulting in them not necessarily “maintaining appropriate skepticism,” she added.

In recent years AI has also suffered from bad decisions — Bender cited research that found a language model could pick up racist and anti-immigrant biases from doing training on the internet.

Kingwell, the University of Toronto professor, said the question of AI sentiency is part “Brave New World” and part “1984,” two dystopian works that touch on issues like technology and human freedom.

“I think for a lot of people, they don’t really know which way to turn, and hence the anxiety,” he added.

India all but sank the WTO’s bid to net a long-sought deal on curbing harmful fishing subsidies, insisting Tuesday it would not sign up without a 25-year exemption.

Negotiations towards banning subsidies that encourage overfishing and threaten the sustainability of the planet’s fish stocks have been going on at the World Trade Organization for more than two decades.

The global trade body only takes decisions by consensus and its 164 members were seemingly closer than ever to sealing a deal at their four-day conference of trade ministers, which is scheduled to wind up on Wednesday.

But India stuck to its demand for a quarter of a century in which to adapt to the proposals on subsidies — a position many others are at odds with.

“The transition period of 25 years sought by India is not intended as a permanent carve-out. It is a must-have for us and for other similarly placed non-distant water fishing countries,” Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said in a statement.

“Without agreeing to the 25-year transition period, it will be impossible for us to finalise the negotiations, as policy space is essential for the long-term sustainable growth and prosperity of our low-income fishermen.”

– ‘Completely unacceptable’ –

Besides fisheries, the WTO conference in Geneva is trying to strike deals on e-commerce, agriculture, food security, Covid-19 vaccine patents and WTO reform.

But some emerging from the negotiating rooms are pointing the finger at Indian intransigence on not just fisheries but on every topic being thrashed out at the WTO’s lakeside headquarters.

“India is being obstructive across the piece, whether it be on e-commerce, fisheries, agriculture,” said one Geneva-based diplomat.

“In no negotiation are they playing a constructive part.”

Goyal said the concerns of a small number of fishermen were prevailing over the lives of nine million fishermen in India.

“This is completely unacceptable! And that is the reason India is opposed to the current text,” he said.

Fishing subsidies is the flagship deal that the WTO’s leader Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was hoping to get passed at the global trade body’s first ministerial conference in nearly five years.

The Nigerian former finance minister, who took office in March 2021, has staked her leadership on getting deals over the line, breathing new life into the organisation by proving it has a role to play in tackling big global challenges.

On fisheries, special treatment for the poorest countries is widely accepted, but some self-identified developing countries have been holding out for an exemption from subsidy constraints, including large fishing nations like India.

EU trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said that some countries were taking “very strong positions, very far-reaching demands”.

That “weakens the purpose of this agreement which is to ensure the sustainability of fish stocks and ensure that the way fishing is subsidised does not contribute to unsustainable fishing practices”, he told reporters.

– ‘It’s crunch time’ –

Okonjo-Iweala, who turned 68 on Monday, hoped that a couple of the topics being negotiated in Geneva would reach a conclusion.

“My own dream for my birthday is to get a successful ministerial,” she said.

“One or two packages passed… I think that would do.”

WTO spokesman Daniel Pruzin said late Tuesday that the organisation was “still optimistic of getting some outcomes” from the conference.

“The not so good news is that we’re running out of time. It’s crunch time,” he added.

He said ministers were “very close” to concluding an agreement on the WTO’s response to pandemics, while on temporarily waiving patents on Covid-19 vaccines, “there’s still work to do, but I do think there is some optimism that that can be achieved”.

Pruzin said some countries had suggested working through the night and going on into Thursday in the hope of reaching agreements.

Tampons are the latest product disappearing from store shelves in the United States, another illustration of supply chain problems that are complicating daily life, following the troubling shortage of baby formula.

Drugstore chains CVS and Walgreens confirmed in messages to AFP that some brands of tampons are temporarily unavailable in some areas.

Procter & Gamble, which makes the ubiquitous Tampax line among other products, said customers might not be able to find their usual brand in American stores.

“We understand it is frustrating for consumers when they can’t find what they need. We can assure you this is a temporary situation in the US, and the Tampax team is producing tampons 24/7 to meet the increased demand for our products,” they said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Edgewell, maker of Playtex and o.b. tampons and Carefree and Stayfree liners and pads, acknowledged inventory issues due to “extensive workforce shortages” caused by two Covid-19 outbreaks at a US plant in late 2021 and a Canadian supplier early this year.

The company said they “anticipate returning to normal levels in the coming weeks.” 

Kimberly-Clark, which makes a variety of consumer products including Kotex tampons, told AFP it has not experienced inventory shortages.

Walgreens meanwhile said it was working with suppliers to “ensure we have supply available” in all its stores.

And CVS said that “if a local store is temporarily out of specific products, we work to replenish those items as quickly as possible.”

The situation has been going on for months, but has received increasing media attention in recent days.

– Like pandemic stockpiling –

Patrick Penfield, a supply chain management specialist at Syracuse University, says demand has increased recently in particular because of additional purchases by consumers who see the shortage of certain brands and panic that they won’t be able to get more product.

He compared it to people stockpiling toilet paper at the start of the pandemic.

There is also a shortage of certain raw materials, including cotton and plastic, he said.

“This is the third straight year where demand for cotton in the US has exceeded what US firms are producing,” Penfield said, pointing to the increased need for masks and personal protection equipment.

In addition, some factories are struggling to operate at full capacity due to staff shortages or Covid-19 spikes, he said.

But the situation is different from the baby formula shortage: Initially caused by supply chain snarls and labor shortages, formula supplies dropped sharply when manufacturer Abbott shut down one Michigan plant in February and issued a product recall after the death of two babies raised concerns over contamination.

When it comes to tampons, “the factories are operating,” Penfield said, predicting a return to normal within the next six months.

In the meantime, the shortage has offered Republicans a new angle of attack against US President Joe Biden, with the Republican National Committee slamming “Biden’s war on women” on Twitter.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro rang the bell at the Sao Paulo stock exchange Tuesday to mark the start of trading in shares of newly privatized electricity company Eletrobras, the second-biggest stock offering worldwide this year.

The launch dilutes the Brazilian government’s stake in Eletrobras, Latin America’s biggest electricity company, from 72 percent to 45 percent.

It is part of Bolsonaro’s plans to privatize state-run companies en masse — a promise he has largely failed to deliver on nearing the end of his four-year term and facing an uphill battle to win reelection in October.

The share offering raised around 30 billion reais ($6 billion).

Economy Minister Paulo Guedes hailed it as a victory for private-sector efficiency.

“The biggest clean-energy generating company in the world is now free,” he said at the event.

“It’s like a child who left home at 18 and is going to go out and triumph. It no longer needs the protection of the state, which was becoming detrimental.”

Bolsonaro grinned and embraced Guedes as a hail of confetti fell, but did not speak at the event.

Guedes says Eletrobras needs to invest 16 billion reais a year to maintain its market share, but was previously only managing around three billion reais a year.

Critics worry the privatization could lead to higher bills for customers.

The event drew a small protest by dozens of demonstrators outside the stock exchange.

The Bolsonaro administration has also voiced interest recently in privatizing oil firm Petrobras, the biggest company in Brazil.

The state-run firm has drawn the far-right president’s ire with a series of recent price increases that are fueling high inflation.

Global equity markets mostly fell on Tuesday as markets awaited a key Federal Reserve decision amid rising expectations for an even tougher rate hike than previously telegraphed.

Panic has swept through trading floors since data on Friday showed US consumer prices rising at their fastest pace in decades on surging energy and food costs caused by the Ukraine war and supply chain snarls.

Investors are now bracing for the Fed’s interest rate decision on Wednesday as the central bank struggles to walk a fine line between reining in inflation and trying to keep the economy on track.

“While there is no doubt that inflation is a considerable challenge for the US at this point, slamming on the brakes too hard risks pushing the economy off its track,” said Tai Hui, chief market strategist for Asia at JP Morgan Asset Management. 

The inflation reading has raised expectations the US central bank could raise rates by a hefty 75 basis points, higher than its previous 0.5-percentage-point hike — something futures markets now consider likely.

“It looks like it’s going to be a 75 basis point hike,” said Quincy Krosby, chief equity strategist of LPL Financial. “We haven’t seen any sign that the Fed wanted to clarify this expectation. In fact, if the Fed stayed with a 50 basis point hike, the market could be disappointed.”

Krosby said the Fed’s sharp increase in lending rates will dampen economic growth but the central bank has little choice at this point.

“The wake-up call was the CPI on Friday and the preliminary consumer confidence,” she said. “The Fed got the message. It needs to maintain its credibility.”

Recession fears sent Wall Street plunging on Monday, with the broad-based S&P 500 stocks index sinking into a bear market, with a drop of more than 20 percent from its recent peak.

After opening higher on Tuesday, US stocks weakened thereafter. The Dow and S&P 500 finished lower, while the Nasdaq mustered modest gains. 

London, Paris, Frankfurt and most Asian equities closed in the red.

Cryptocurrencies have mirrored the falls in the stock markets, with bitcoin tumbling to an 18-month low under $23,000.

Digital currency exchange Coinbase said Tuesday it will lay off 18 percent of staff, citing tight economic conditions and an overly rapid expansion.

– Key figures at around 2030 GMT –

New York – Dow: DOWN 0.5 percent at 30,364.83 (close)

New York – S&P 500: DOWN 0.4 percent at 3,735,48 (close)

New York – Nasdaq: UP 0.2 percent at 10,828.35 (close)

Frankfurt – DAX: DOWN 0.9 percent at 13,304.39 (close)

Paris – CAC 40: DOWN 1.2 percent at 5,949.84 (close)

London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.3 percent at 7,187.46 (close)

EURO STOXX 50: DOWN 0.8 percent at 3,475.18 (close) 

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 1.3 percent at 26,629.86 (close)

Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: FLAT at 21,067.99 (close)

Shanghai – Composite: UP 1.0 percent at 3,288.91 (close)

Euro/dollar: UP at $1.0420 from $1.0409 late Monday

Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.1993 from $1.2134

Euro/pound: UP at 86.84 pence from 85.79 pence

Dollar/yen: UP at 135.33 yen from 134.42 yen 

Brent North Sea crude: DOWN 0.9 percent at $121.97 per barrel

West Texas Intermediate: DOWN 2.0 percent at $118.93 per barrel

burs-jmb

India all but sunk the WTO’s bid to net a long-sought deal on curbing harmful fishing subsidies when it insisted Tuesday it would only sign up if it is given a 25-year exemption from the restrictions.

Negotiations towards banning subsidies that encourage overfishing and threaten the sustainability of the planet’s fish stocks have been going on at the World Trade Organization for more than two decades.

The global trade body only takes decisions by consensus and it was thought that members were tantalisingly close to sealing a deal at their four-day conference of trade ministers which winds up on Wednesday.

But India insisted on carving out a quarter of a century in which to adapt to the proposals on subsidies.

“The transition period of 25 years sought by India is not intended as a permanent carve-out. It is a must-have for us and for other similarly placed non-distant water fishing countries,” Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said in a statement.

“We feel that without agreeing to the 25-year transition period, it will be impossible for us to finalise the negotiations, as policy space is essential for the long-term sustainable growth and prosperity of our low-income fishermen.”

The conference mood darkened earlier Tuesday with several diplomats pointing the finger at Indian intransigence on not just fisheries but on every topic being thrashed out at the WTO’s lakeside headquarters.

The WTO conference is trying to strike deals on e-commerce, agriculture, food security, Covid-19 vaccine patents and WTO reform.

“India is being obstructive across the piece, whether it be on e-commerce, fisheries, agriculture,” said one Geneva-based diplomat.

“In no negotiation are they playing a constructive part.”

Goyal said the concerns of a small number of fishermen were prevailing over the lives of nine million fishermen in India.

“This is completely unacceptable! And that is the reason India is opposed to the current text,” he said.

Fishing subsidies is the flagship deal that the WTO’s leader Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was hoping to get passed at the global trade body’s first ministerial conference in nearly five years, being held in Geneva this week.

The Nigerian former finance minister, who took office in March 2021, has staked her leadership on banging heads together and getting deals over the line, breathing new life into the organisation by proving it has a role to play in tackling big global challenges.

On fisheries, special treatment for the poorest countries is widely accepted, but some self-identified developing countries are demanding exemption from subsidy constraints, including large fishing nations like India — and the idea has met resistance from others.

EU trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis earlier urged the assembled ministers to embrace compromise amid the hectic negotiations.

On fisheries, “there are countries taking very strong positions, very far-reaching demands, which in a sense weakens the purpose of this agreement which is to ensure the sustainability of fish stocks and ensure that the way fishing is subsidised does not contribute to unsustainable fishing practices”, he told reporters.

Okonjo-Iweala, who turned 68 on Monday, hoped that a couple of the topics being negotiated in Geneva would reach a conclusion.

“My own dream for my birthday is to get a successful ministerial,” she said.

“One or two packages passed… I think that would do.”

Remi Parmentier, who heads the Varda Group which advises on environmental issues, said on Twitter: “If India is so unhappy at the World Trade Organization, maybe they should just suspend their membership, and let the rest of the members get on.”