Blake Lemoine, a software engineer on Google\u2019s artificial intelligence development team, has gone public with claims of encountering \u201csentient\u201d AI on the company\u2019s servers after he was suspended for sharing confidential information about the project with third parties.<\/p>\n
The Alphabet Inc unit placed the researcher on paid leave early last week on claims he breached the firm\u2019s confidentiality policy, he said in a Medium post titled \u201cMay be fired soon for doing AI ethics work.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the posting, he draws a connection to prior members of Google\u2019s AI ethics group, such as Margaret Mitchell, who were eventually dismissed by the company in a similar fashion after raising concerns.<\/p>\n
The Washington Post on Saturday ran an interview with Lemoine, wherein he said he concluded the Google AI he interacted with was a person, \u201cin his capacity as a priest, not a scientist.\u201d The AI in question is dubbed LaMDA, or Language Model for Dialogue Applications, and is used to generate chatbots that interact with human users by adopting various personality tropes.<\/p>\n
Lemoine said he tried to conduct experiments to prove it, but was rebuffed by senior executives at the company when he raised the matter internally.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome in the broader AI community are considering the long-term possibility of sentient or general AI, but it doesn\u2019t make sense to do so by anthropomorphizing today\u2019s conversational models, which are not sentient,\u201d Google spokesperson Brian Gabriel said in response.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur team – including ethicists and technologists – has reviewed Blake\u2019s concerns per our AI Principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company said it does not comment on personnel matters when asked about Lemoine\u2019s suspension.<\/p>\n
\nTo be criticized in such brilliant terms by @sapinker<\/a> may be one of the highest honors I have ever received. I think I may put a screenshot of this on my CV! https:\/\/t.co\/RDAnjvIZJC<\/a><\/p>\n
\u2014 Blake Lemoine (@cajundiscordian) June 12, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n