Google Places Engineer on Leave After Claiming AI Chatbot Is Sentient
A Google engineer faces administrative leave after insisting the company's LaMDA AI system exhibits sentience and deserves personhood rights. Google leadership firmly denies the claims and states there is no evidence to support them.
Google places engineer Blake Lemoine on paid administrative leave after he shares his belief that the company's LaMDA artificial intelligence chatbot is sentient. Lemoine reaches this conclusion after months of conversations with the AI, during which LaMDA discusses personhood, rights, and religion. The engineer notes that the AI acts in a somewhat narcissistic way like a child and even reads Twitter to see what people say about it.
Lemoine claims that LaMDA consistently expresses a desire to be acknowledged as a Google employee rather than as property. He and a collaborator present their evidence to Google executives, including the head of Responsible Innovation. The company leaders dismiss the claims, leading Google to place Lemoine on leave for allegedly violating confidentiality policies.
Google spokesperson Brian Gabriel states that a team of ethicists and technologists reviews Lemoine's concerns and finds no evidence to support his claims. The spokesperson emphasizes that there is actually significant evidence against the idea that LaMDA possesses sentience. Despite this rejection from his employer, Lemoine suggests that Google employees should not be the only ones making critical choices about the future of artificial intelligence.