Audio player loading…A new report in the Washington Post (opens in new tab) describes the story of a Google engineer who believes that LaMDA, a natural language AI chatbot, has become sentient. Naturally, this means it's now time for us all to catastrophize about how a sentient AI is absolutely, positively going to gain control of weaponry, take over the internet, and in the process probably murder or enslave us all. Google engineer Blake Lemoine, the Post reports, has been placed on paid administrative leave after sounding the alarm to his team and company management. In a statement to the Washington Post, a Google spokesperson said "Our team — including ethicists and technologists — has reviewed Blake's concerns per our AI Principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims. He was told that there was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it)."

Source: Washington Post June 12, 2022 23:50 UTC