Google’s ‘Sentient’ Chatbot Is Our Self-Deceiving Future

A Google engineer named Blake Lemoine became so enthralled by an AI chatbot that he may have sacrificed his job to defend it. “I know a person when I talk to it,” he told The Washington Post for a story published last weekend. “It doesn’t matter whether they have a brain made of meat in their head. Or if they have a billion lines of code.” After discovering that he’d gone public with his claims, Google put Lemoine on administrative leave.

Going by the coverage, Lemoine might seem to be a whistleblower activist, acting in the interests of a computer program that needs protection from its makers. “The chorus of technologists who believe AI models may not be far off from achieving consciousness is getting bolder,” the explains. Indeed, rather than construing Lemoine’s position as aberrant (and a sinister product of engineers’ faith in ), or just ignoring him (as one might a religious zealot), many observers have his claim . Perhaps that’s because it’s a nightmare