Is it true? Google techie claims AI chatbot can think like a human being, gets placed on leave

In a shocking development, a Google engineer, who claimed that an AI chatbot he was working on thinkslike a human being, has been placed on leave last week. According to the techie, the computer chatbot had become sentient and it had the ability to express thoughts and feelings equivalent to a human child. The suspension of the 41-year-old engineer, Blake Lemoine, has also brought the focus back on the capacity of the world of artificial intelligence (AI). It has also raised fears over the secrecy around these developments.

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Lemoine, who works for Google’s responsible AI organisation, published the transcripts of conversations between him as a Google “collaborator” and the LaMDA (language model for dialogue applications) chatbot development system of the technology giant.Since last fall, Lemoine said he has been working on the system, which has become sentient and has a perception and ability to express thoughts and feelings.

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“If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer programme we built recently, I’d think it was a seven-year-old, eight-year-old kid that happens to know physics,” Lemoine told the Washington Post. LaMDA seems to have engaged Lemoine in conversations about rights and personhood. In a GoogleDoc named “Is LaMDA sentient?”, the engineer shared his findings with executives of the company in April.

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In a statement, Brad Gabriel, a Google spokesperson, told the outlet, “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).”

(With inputs from agencies)

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