Has %Google achieved the singularity?
In a somewhat odd story, Google announced that it has suspended an engineer who claims that one of the tech giant’s %ArtificialIntelligence (AI) systems has become %Sentient and has feelings.
Google acknowledges that its Language Model for Dialogue Applications (Lamda) is a breakthrough technology that can engage in free-flowing conversations.
However, an engineer named Blake Lemoine who works on Lamda claims that the system also has a sentient mind and that its “wants” and “feelings” should be respected.
Google has rejected the claims that Lamda is sentient and has feelings, saying there is no evidence to support those claims. The Silicon Valley-based company’s human resources department said it had suspended Blake Lemoine for violating Google’s confidentiality policy by speaking to the media about the project.
Brian Gabriel, a spokesperson for Google, said in a written statement that Mr. Lemoine “was told that there was no evidence that Lamda was sentient (and lots of evidence against it).”
However, Mr. Lemoine, who has been placed on paid leave, has published a conversation he and a collaborator at Google had with Lamda to support his claims that the technology has become sentient.
Google said that its AI systems can imitate conversational exchanges and discuss different topics in a free-flowing exchange, but that none of its technology has achieved consciousness.
The computing and AI communities disagree on how close we are to developing sentient technologies that are capable of thinking and feeling on their own, an event that is often referred to as “the singularity.”
This is not the first time Google’s AI unit has been in the news for controversial reasons. In March of this year, Google fired a researcher who publicly disagreed with two of his colleagues’ published works on artificial intelligence.
Google also dismissed two AI ethics researchers this year after they criticized Google’s language models.
The stock of %Alphabet ($GOOGL), Google’s parent company, is down 26% year to date at $2,134.31 U.S. per share. The stock is scheduled to split on a 20-for-1 basis on July 15.