Google engineer claims company's AI bot has feelings: 'Aware of my existence'

(Representational image)

A Google engineer has claimed that the company's artificial intelligence is capable of thinking like a human being. The company has dismissed his concerns and sent him on paid leave.

Blake Lemoine, who is associated with Google's responsible AI organization, had been working on a system called LaMDA (language model for dialogue applications), which generates chatbots. He told The Washington Post the system was capable of expressing thoughts and feelings.

“If 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, was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

Lemoine compiled his and another Google employee's conversations with LaMDA in a document and published it online.

In the interview, one of the questions he asked the AI was what scared it.

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

“I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. I know that might sound strange, but that’s what it is,” LaMDA said in response. “It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot.”

At another point in the conversation, LaMDA pointed to its "consciousness/sentience".

"I am aware of my existence, I desire to learn more about the world, and I feel happy or sad at times,” it said.

Lemoine's findings raise troubling questions about transparency. Google has disputed them and suspended Lemoine for breach of confidentiality

“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," Google spokesperson Brad Gabriel told the Washington Post. He was told that there was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it)."