(July 24): Google has fired a software engineer who worked on the company's artificial intelligence (AI) development team over his public contention that he had conversations with a bot that had become "sentient". Google confirmed the firing in a statement, saying the claims from the engineer, Blake Lemoine, were "wholly unfounded" and that he had shared confidential company information with third parties. Lemoine made his claim in an interview with the Washington Post in June, saying that LaMDA, the AI bot he interacted with, was a person. Not long after, Google placed him on paid leave. Google said it has looked into the matter extensively, including 11 reviews of LaMDA.

Source: The Edge Markets July 24, 2022 11:08 UTC