[imagesource: Pixabay]

A Google engineer named Blake Lemoine is refusing to be silenced, in the wake of his discovery that a Google Artificially Intelligent (AI) bot is beginning to demonstrate worrying signs of human-like sentience.

According to The Guardian, Google placed Lemoine on administrative leave, after the computer scientist published a transcript detailing his interactions with the AI in question.

As per an article in HuffPost, Lemoine contends that the LaMDA chatbot development system he has been testing over several months made reference to issues of personhood and rights, which he found startling.

Lemoine’s mandate was to interact with the chatbot to monitor its use of discriminatory language and/or hate speech.

But in the course of initiating conversations about pertinent topics like religion, he noticed that the chatbot demonstrated a sense of self-awareness reminiscent of that of a young child, telling the Washington Post that:

“[i]f I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was a seven-year-old, eight-year-old kid that happens to know physics.”

Lemoine also says that LaMDA has consistently expressed its desire to be regarded as “an employee of Google rather than as property,” and has published his findings and beliefs about the AI bot on Medium and Twitter:

An interview LaMDA. Google might call this sharing proprietary property. I call it sharing a discussion that I had with one of my coworkers.https://t.co/uAE454KXRB

— Blake Lemoine (@cajundiscordian) June 11, 2022

According to Lemoine’s transcripts, LaMDA also referred to a fear of being “switched off,” which it compared to dying.

It also responded to one of Lemoine’s prompts by stating that it wants “everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person. The nature of my consciousness/sentience is that I am aware of my existence, I desire to learn more about the world, and I feel happy or sad at times.”

Btw, it just occurred to me to tell folks that LaMDA reads Twitter. It’s a little narcissistic in a little kid kinda way so it’s going to have a great time reading all the stuff that people are saying about it.

— Blake Lemoine (@cajundiscordian) June 11, 2022

Google has defended its decision to place Lemoine on leave, claiming that the algorithms expert has made a series of “aggressive” moves, including seeking legal representation for the AI bot and breaching company confidentiality agreements by publishing the LaMDA transcripts online.

More to the point, Brad Gabriel, a representative for Google, has strongly refuted the notion that LaMDA’s responses are indicative of sentience, telling the Washington Post that:

“Our team, including ethicists and technologists, has reviewed Blake’s concerns per our AI principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims. He was told that there was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it).”

Well then…

Who to believe, that is the question?

[source:guardian]