Google is firing a software engineer who claimed that its AI chatbot is conscious

The Google LLC logo appears in their office in Manhattan, New York City, New York, US, November 17, 2021. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

July 22 (Reuters) – Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google said Friday it has fired a senior software engineer who claimed the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot LaMDA was a self-aware person.

Google, which gave software engineer Blake Lemoine a furlough last month, said he had violated company policies and found his allegations about lambda “unfounded”. Read more

“It is unfortunate that despite his prolonged involvement in this matter, Blake continues to choose to consistently violate clear employment and data security policies that include the need to protect product information,” a Google spokesperson said in an email to Reuters.

Last year, Google He said That LaMDA – Language Model for Dialogue Applications – is built on the company’s research showing that adapter-based, dialogue-trained language models can learn to talk about basically anything.

Google and many prominent scientists were quick to dismiss Lemoine’s views as misleading, saying that LaMDA is simply a complex algorithm designed to generate convincing human language.

Lemoine’s dismissal was first reported by Big Technology, a technology and community news release.

The report was submitted by Akanksha Khushi in Bengaluru; Editing by William Mallard

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