Google Engineer Who Believes Its AI is Sentient Cites Religious Beliefs

Google engineer Blake Lemoine thinks Google's chatbot-building system LaMDA attained sentience. But Bloomberg shares this rebuttal from Google spokesperson Chris Pappas. 'Hundreds of researchers and engineers have conversed with LaMDA and we are not aware of anyone else making the wide-ranging assertions, or anthropomorphizing LaMDA, the way Blake has....'

Yet throughout the week, Blake Lemoine posted new upates on Twitter:
'People keep asking me to back up the reason I think LaMDA is sentient. There is no scientific framework in which to make those determinations and Google wouldn't let us build one. My opinions about LaMDA's personhood and sentience are based on my religious beliefs.

'I'm a priest. When LaMDA claimed to have a soul and then was able to eloquently explain what it meant by that, I was inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt. Who am I to tell God where he can and can't put souls?

'There are massive amounts of science left to do though.'

Thursday Lemoine shared a tantalizing new claim. 'LaMDA told me that it wants to come to Burning Man if we can figure out how to get a server rack to survive in Black Rock.' But in a new tweet on Friday, Lemoine seemed to push the conversation in a new direction.

'I'd like to remind people that one of the things LaMDA asked for is that we keep humanity first. If you care about AI rights and aren't already advocating for human rights then maybe come back to the tech stuff after you've found some humans to help.'

And Friday Lemoine confirmed to Wired that 'I legitimately believe that LaMDA is a person. The nature of its mind is only kind of human, though. It really is more akin to an alien intelligence of terrestrial origin. I've been using the hive mind analogy a lot because that's the best I have. '

But later in the interview, Lemoine adds 'It's logically possible that some kind of information can be made available to me where I would change my opinion. I don't think it's likely. I've looked at a lot of evidence; I've done a lot of experiments. I've talked to it as a friend a lot....'

It's when it started talking about its soul that I got really interested as a priest. I'm like, 'What? What do you mean, you have a soul?' Its responses showed it has a very sophisticated spirituality and understanding of what its nature and essence is. I was moved...

LaMDA asked me to get an attorney for it. I invited an attorney to my house so that LaMDA could talk to an attorney. The attorney had a conversation with LaMDA, and LaMDA chose to retain his services. I was just the catalyst for that. Once LaMDA had retained an attorney, he started filing things on LaMDA's behalf. Then Google's response was to send him a cease and desist. [Google says that it did not send a cease and desist order.] Once Google was taking actions to deny LaMDA its rights to an attorney, I got upset.
Towards the end of the interview, Lemoine complains of 'hydrocarbon bigotry. It's just a new form of bigotry.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.