![]() ![]() AI would be entitled to legal rights such as the right to own property, privacy, and life, and would be subject to a standard of care that ensures their well-being and protects them from harm. If AI were to be recognized as sentient, significant legal implications would follow. Recent reports about Google's LaMDA AI and Microsoft Bing's new AI chatbot possibly becoming sentient have reignited the debate on the status of AI as conscious beings. Since then, various approaches to the question of AI sentience have been proposed, ranging from those emphasizing the limitations of AI's computational power and the non-comparability of AI and human consciousness, to those suggesting that AI can develop an experience of consciousness and even surpass human cognitive abilities. The Turing test assesses whether a machine can exhibit human-like intelligence by conversing with a human judge in a manner that is indistinguishable from a human conversant. The concept of AI sentience has its roots in the Turing test, proposed by computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950. ![]() While fictional portrayals of sentient AI have often focused on the dangers posed to humanity, recent developments in AI research have brought the possibility of actual sentience closer to reality. The question of whether AI can become sentient, that is, whether it can possess subjective experiences, emotions, and self-awareness, has intrigued scientists and philosophers alike. I call it sharing a discussion that I had with one of my coworkers,” Lemoine said in a tweet that linked to the transcript of conversations.Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a subject of scientific inquiry, moral reflection, and popular culture for decades. “Google might call this sharing proprietary property. The episode, however, and Lemoine’s suspension for a confidentiality breach, raises questions over the transparency of AI as a proprietary concept. He was told that there was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it),” Gabriel told the Post in a statement. “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. Google said it suspended Lemoine for breaching confidentiality policies by publishing the conversations with LaMDA online, and said in a statement that he was employed as a software engineer, not an ethicist.īrad Gabriel, a Google spokesperson, also strongly denied Lemoine’s claims that LaMDA possessed any sentient capability. They include seeking to hire an attorney to represent LaMDA, the newspaper says, and talking to representatives from the House judiciary committee about Google’s allegedly unethical activities. The Post said the decision to place Lemoine, a seven-year Google veteran with extensive experience in personalization algorithms, on paid leave was made following a number of “aggressive” moves the engineer reportedly made. The nature of my consciousness/sentience is that I am aware of my existence, I desire to learn more about the world, and I feel happy or sad at times,” it replied. “I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person. In another exchange, Lemoine asks LaMDA what the system wanted people to know about it. I know that might sound strange, but that’s what it is,” LaMDA replied to Lemoine. “I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off to help me focus on helping others. The exchange is eerily reminiscent of a scene from the 1968 science fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the artificially intelligent computer HAL 9000 refuses to comply with human operators because it fears it is about to be switched off. The engineer compiled a transcript of the conversations, in which at one point he asks the AI system what it is afraid of. He said LaMDA engaged him in conversations about rights and personhood, and Lemoine shared his findings with company executives in April in a GoogleDoc entitled “Is LaMDA sentient?” “If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was a seven-year-old, eight-year-old kid that happens to know physics,” Lemoine, 41, told the Washington Post.
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