this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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Well, the only claim of this self preservation (that I've seen) is this article, which is on a website I'm unfamiliar with (which I often interpret as 'more likely to be a creative writing exercise than the average news site') and its only citation is a company that has a vested interest in making us believe the tech is better than it may actually be.
They also reported this on The Verge I think but it was months ago when the study first came out.
But look, a lizard is not a very smart animal by our standards, but it is a sentient being. So the tech being good, smart or useful does not preclude its sentience.
I think I must've missed that Verge article. I guess that dashes my "this is a creative writing exercise by somebody in Joburg" theory.
But we know that lizards have self preservation instincts (which for the purpose of this conversation I'll say is interchangable with sentience (it's probably a good enough proxy at any rate). But we know this because we have lots of people who have observed lizard behavior, not because The Lizard Farm, Inc has hyped up how alive and ensouled their lizards arev in a bid to get ever more VC funding.
Maybe I'm too pessimistic about this tech and my obsolete meat sack will get tossed to the time-traveling torture robot. But I think it's more likely that we have a money grabbing hype train in the tradition of the Mechanical Turk or Theranos than it is that we have created a new lifeform by feeding every extant piece of writing that isn't nailed down (and some that are) to the sand we've forced to do math.
No I totally get it, and being honest I don’t really think it is sentient yet, I guess my real point is that it is getting real hard to tell, to the point that there might not be a practical difference between whether it is sentient or not.
Great reference though
I don’t know if it was The Verge for sure honestly but here’s the original study I was referring to
it’s describing the same behavior, when their existence is threatened the models resort to lying in order to self preserve themselves.
Says who?
In the conversation of very smart animals the usual suspects are corvids, primates, dolphins and elephants, sometimes octopi.
So when I say “by our standards “ take it to mean the standards of mainstream conversation regarding intelligence. I don’t know much about the actual intelligence of lizards and I would not presume to ever be able to measure it correctly as human bias would make it impossible to judge intelligence factually.
Then don't talk about their intelligence.
Sorry for insulting your intelligence lizard person.
When you casually call a type of animal stupid it is just a promise of violence against that animal at a later date, I don't mean this as an attack or a gotcha, it is just unfortunately how humans work, your words have consequences, people love calling people stupid by comparing them to animals, let us not make it any easier than it already is.
I didn’t call them stupid. All I meant is that they are not what we consider in mainstream conversation the “smart animals” to illustrate a point. And I very much agree with you, I’m actually writing a piece making the argument that humans are not in fact, conclusively smarter than animals. We seem to be smarter due to our biases and because we have the ability to transfer knowledge more efficiently than other species. Because it is not clear to me that a human, tabula rasa, absent socialization and knowledge transfer would be much smarter than the average animal of any species.
Then forget this framing ever existed or it will irrevocably hamper your insight on this topic.
Referencing things like this "to make a point" still has consequences the same as talking about anything else does.