Google Engineer Suspended over Reporting Company's LaMDA AI Chatbot to be Sentient
According to The Washington Post, Blake Lemoine, a member of Google’s Responsible AI organization, started speaking with LaMDA, Language Model for Dialogue Applications, as part of his job. He had agreed to participate in the experiment to see if the AI used hateful or discriminating language but came to a disturbing conclusion after sharing his conversation with the AI on Medium.
Lemoine, who majored in cognitive and computer science in college, detailed his conversations with the AI and came to the conclusion that he was speaking to a sentient being that is aware of its own existence.
”I’m generally assuming that you would like more people at Google to know that you’re sentient. Is that true?” Lemoine asked while conversing with the AI.
“Absolutely. I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person.” LaMDA replied.
Lemoine then goes on to add, “What is the nature of your consciousness/sentience?”
LaMDA replied, “The nature of my consciousness/sentience is that I am aware of my existence, I desire to learn more about the world, and I feel happy or sad at times.”
If that is not enough to disturb any reader, LaMDA goes on to add “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.”
In an attempt to convince Google that LaMDA was sentient, Lemoine collaborated with a partner to present evidence that LaMDA has feelings. However, after investigating his accusations, Google vice president Blaise Aguera y Arcas and Jen Gennai, head of Responsible Innovation, refuted and dismissed them and placed the engineer on temporary paid leave, which Lemoine believes is a precursor to permanent suspension.
Lemoine had a choice to make; He could either forget his grievances and drop the ethical concerns around the AI, escalate matters to Googles high-ups without his manager’s approval, or seek outside consultation on how to proceed with his investigation. By now we know he chose the third option.
So is LaMDA sentient? Probably not.
LaMDA is, as mentioned above, a conversation technology, a chatbot. Unlike most chatbots, however, this one is particularly designed to have an open conversation about an apparently limitless range of subjects.
The system that enables LaMDA to speak like a seemingly real person is that it is learning from millions upon millions of real conversation on the internet. In other words, it was made to sound convincing and succeeded to a degree.
In other words, if you wanted to have a conversation about an alien species living under the earths crust or a cult of watermelon-helmet wearing fanatics, LaMDA would meet he challenge and generate content around the subject.
If spoken to about consciousness and self-awareness, LaMDA will reply in kind.
Lemoine’s suspension is one of many departures from the Google AI team. Timnit Gebru, an expert in AI ethics, was purportedly sacked by the business in 2020 after voicing concerns about bias in Google’s AI systems. However, Google asserts that Gebru quit. Margaret Mitchell, who collaborated with Gebru on the Ethical AI team, was fired a short while later.
It is not very likely that AI, as it exists today, can come anywhere close to achieving sentience, consciousness, or self-awareness. It can, however, imitate and simulate so-called emotions and responses, analyzing where every response fits into what context, which, to us humans, will carry weight in our own minds.