Google Fires Researcher who Claimed LaMDA AI was Sentient
upstart writes:
Lemoine went public with his claims last month, to the chagrin of Google and other AI researchers:
Blake Lemoine, an engineer who's spent the last seven years with Google, has been fired, reports Alex Kantrowitz of the Big Technology newsletter. The news was allegedly broken by Lemoine himself during a taping of the podcast of the same name, though the episode is not yet public. Google confirmed the firing to Engadget.
Lemoine, who most recently was part of Google's Responsible AI project, went to the Washington Post last month with claims that one of company's AI projects had allegedly gained sentience. [...] Lemoine seems not only to have believed LaMDA attained sentience, but was openly questioning whether it possessed a soul. [...]
After making these statements to the press, seemingly without authorization from his employer, Lemoine was put on paid administrative leave. Google, both in statements to the Washington Post then and since, has steadfastly asserted its AI is in no way sentient.
Several members of the AI research community spoke up against Lemoine's claims as well. Margaret Mitchell, who was fired from Google after calling out the lack of diversity within the organization, wrote on Twitter that systems like LaMDA don't develop intent, they instead are "modeling how people express communicative intent in the form of text strings." Less tactfully, Gary Marcus referred to Lemoine's assertions as "nonsense on stilts."
Previously: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=22/06/13/1441225
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