Former engineer claims Google’s chatbot AI is sentient

Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) chatbot AI, recently came into the spotlight with one suspended engineer claiming that it is sentient. The segment originally aired on Jun 15, 2022.

Video Transcript

DAN HOWLEY: This is the Language Model for Dialogue Applications. We'll call it LaMDA going forward. And the engineer in question is a man named Blake Lemoine. And essentially what he's saying is that LaMDA is, at least according to him, sentient and that it has the capacity of a seven to eight-year-old child. The reason why he's suspended is obviously for going forward. He did that in a Medium post on his own.

In this post interview, he points out that his statement that this is a sentient being isn't being made as a scientist, but as a priest. This chat bot he said started talking about its own rights as well as personhood. He said he brought this to Google's attention. Google kind of said, look, there's no here here. So as far as most experts are saying, this isn't real as far as being sentient. But it is a good story to look at.