Don’t unplug your computer! Don’t throw away that smartphone! Just because a Google software engineer whose conclusions have been questioned says a computer program is sentient, meaning it can think and has feelings, doesn’t mean an attack of the cyborgs through your devices is imminent.
However, Blake Lemoine’s analysis should make us consider how little we have planned for a future where advances in robotics will increasingly change how we live. Already, automation has put thousands of Americans who lack higher-level skills out of a job.
But let’s get back to Lemoine, who was put on leave by Google for violating its confidentiality policy. Lemoine contends that the Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) system that Google built to create chatbots has a soul. A chatbot is what you might be talking to when you call a company like Amazon or Facebook about a customer service issue.
