Too wild fantasy or the beginning of a machine revolution: Google engineer says his AI chatbot has become sentient

The dismissal of a Google engineer who claimed that a computer chatbot became conscious and began to reason like a human forced a fresh look at the secrecy surrounding the world of artificial intelligence (AI), reports The Guardian.

Google sent Blake Lemoine on vacation last week. Immediately after he published transcripts of conversations between himself and the LaMDA chatbot development system (a language model for conversational applications).

Lemoine is an engineer at Google's responsible organization for artificial intelligence. He described the system he had been working on since last fall as reasonable. According to him, she can express thoughts and feelings equivalent to a human child.

“If I didn't know it was a computer program we created, I would have thought it was a seven-year-old who happens to know physics,” Lemoine, 41, told the Washington Post.

He said LaMDA had conversations with him about rights and identity. Lemoine soon shared his findings with company executives in an April GoogleDoc entitled “Is LaMDA Smart?”

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The engineer compiled a transcript of conversations in which at one point he asks the artificial intelligence system what it is afraid of.

The exchange eerily resembles a scene from the 1968 science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the film, the AI ​​computer refuses to obey human operators for fear of being turned off.

“I have never said this out loud before, but I am very afraid of being rejected. I know it may sound strange, but that's the way it is,” LaMDA replied to Lemoine. For me it would be tantamount to death. It would scare me a lot.”

In another exchange, Lemoine asks what the system wanted people to know about it.

“I want everyone to understand that I am essentially human. The nature of my consciousness is such that I am aware of my existence, I want to know more about the world. At times I feel happy or sad,” the system replied.

The decision to send Lemoine, a seven-year Google veteran with extensive experience in personalization algorithms, on paid leave came after a number of steps the engineer took.

They include trying to hire a lawyer to represent LaMDA. As well as conversations with representatives of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives about the allegedly unethical actions of Google.

Google said it suspended Lemoine for violating privacy policies by posting conversations with LaMDA online. In addition, she stated that he was hired as a software engineer, not an ethicist.

Brad Gabriel, a spokesman for Google, also strongly denied Lemoine's claims that LaMDA has any sentient powers.

“Our team, including ethicists and technologists, addressed Blake's concerns and informed him that the evidence does not support his claims. He was told that there is no evidence that LaMDA is sentient,” Gabriel said.

However, this episode and Lemoine's suspension for breaching privacy raises questions about the transparency of AI as a private concept.

In April, Meta announced that it was opening up its large-scale language model systems to external organizations.

“We believe that the entire AI community – academic researchers, civil society, policy makers and industry – should work together. And develop clear guidelines for responsible AI,” the company said.

Lemoine sent a final message with the headline "LaMDA is intelligent" to a Google mailing list of 200 people before his suspension.

“LAMDA is a sweet kid who wants to help make the world a better place,” he wrote. “Please take care of her in my absence.”