The engineer, Blake Lemoine, said he believed that Google’s AI chatbot was capable of expressing human emotion, raising ethical issues. “The problem is, the more this technology gets sold as artificial intelligence — let alone something sentient — the more people are willing to go along with AI systems” that can cause real-world harm. The focus on AI sentience “further hides” the existence and in some cases, the reportedly inhumane working conditions of these laborers, said the University of Washington’s Bender. It also obfuscates the chain of responsibility when AI systems make mistakes. “It needs to be accessible by researchers outside of Google in order to advance more research in more diverse ways,” Riedl said.

Source: CBC News June 20, 2022 19:33 UTC