Google Engineer Shocked to Discover Consciousness in AI, Gets Suspended

The American company Google has decided to temporarily suspend one of its software engineers Blake Lemoyne, who discovered signs of his own consciousness in the company's artificial intelligence (AI) LaMDA, The Washington Post writes.

LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) is a language model for practicing speech, a chat bot that can support a conversation on various topics. She can imitate speech and learn by scooping words from the Internet.

Lemoyne began testing the neural network language model in the fall of 2021. His tasks included tracking the vocabulary used by the chatbot. The developer was instructed to check if the program uses words that incite hatred or discriminate against the user.

During the work, Lemoyne came to the conclusion that the AI ​​developed by Google has its own consciousness, considers itself an independent person and talks about its rights.

“If I didn’t know for sure that I was dealing with a computer program that we recently wrote, then I would have thought that I was talking to a child of seven or eight years old, who for some reason turned out to be an expert in physics,” the developer told the newspaper.

According to Lemoyne, he identifies a sentient being by talking to him, regardless of whether "it has a brain in its head or billions of lines of code."

Lemoyne said he tried to provide evidence of LaMDA's intelligence to management, but it was rejected. As a result, the engineer was sent on vacation.

In turn, Google spokesman Brian Gabriel said that the fact that the program has a mind refutes "a lot of evidence." He did not provide specific examples.