Blake Lemoine, an employee of Google, was sent on leave urgently. This happened because the engineer expressed opinions regarding the consciousness of artificial intelligence.
Could it be that artificial intelligence has gained consciousness?
It all started when engineer Blake Lemoine decided to communicate with LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications). This is a language model designed for human interaction. A smart bot. LaMDA’s feature is that it draws information from a global database.
During the conversation with AI, Blake Lemoine shifted to a religious topic. And how surprised he was when the computer program started talking about its own rights. The dialogue with the engineer was so convincing that it created a sense of LaMDA’s consciousness.
Of course, the engineer shared his thoughts with his management. Instead of verifying Blake’s assumptions, he was simply sent on leave. They considered him to be abnormal, tired from work. Perhaps, Google’s management possesses more information that subordinates should not know.
Google’s official representative, Brian Gabriel, tends to adhere to generally accepted norms. Where a machine cannot be considered conscious by default. And movies like “Terminator” or “I, Robot” are science fiction. Notably, Google did not pursue this topic further, proving to the public that consciousness in AI is impossible. This is precisely what worries ordinary citizens on planet Earth.
