Home
Internet
Internet News
Google Says It Has Fired Software Engineer Who Claimed Its AI Chatbot Is Sentient

Google Says It Has Fired Software Engineer Who Claimed Its AI Chatbot Is Sentient

Software engineer Blake Lemoine violated company policies, says Google.

By Reuters | Updated: 23 July 2022 10:03 IST

Google Says It Has Fired Software Engineer Who Claimed Its AI Chatbot Is Sentient

Photo Credit: Pexels/ Tara Winstead

Google's LaMDA software is a sophisticated AI chatbot

Click Here to Add Gadgets360 As A Trusted Source

Highlights

Blake Lemoine claimed that LaMDA was a self-aware person
Google placed software engineer Blake Lemoine on leave last month
Google said Blake Lemoine had violated company policies

Alphabet's Google said on Friday it has dismissed a senior software engineer who claimed the company's artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot LaMDA was a self-aware person.

Google, which placed software engineer Blake Lemoine on leave last month, said he had violated company policies and that it found his claims on LaMDA to be "wholly unfounded."

"It's regrettable that despite lengthy engagement on this topic, Blake still chose to persistently violate clear employment and data security policies that include the need to safeguard product information," a Google spokesperson said in an email to Reuters.

YouTube Music for Android Could Soon Get a Sleep Timer Feature: Report

Last year, Google said that LaMDA — Language Model for Dialogue Applications — was built on the company's research showing Transformer-based language models trained on dialogue could learn to talk about essentially anything.

Google and many leading scientists were quick to dismiss Lemoine's views as misguided, saying LaMDA is simply a complex algorithm designed to generate convincing human language.

Lemoine's dismissal was first reported by Big Technology, a tech and society newsletter.

Democrats Widen Scrutiny of US Tech Companies Over Abortion Data Privacy

© Thomson Reuters 2022

Why is Oppo making strange choices with its flagship Reno series? We discuss this on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.

Comments

Get your daily dose of tech news, reviews, and insights, in under 80 characters on Gadgets 360 Turbo. Connect with fellow tech lovers on our Forum. Follow us on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News for instant updates. Catch all the action on our YouTube channel.