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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Guardian staff and agency

Google fires software engineer who claims AI chatbot is sentient

Google Blake Lemoine
Google logo
Google say LaMDA is simply a complex algorithm designed to generate convincing human language. Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters

Google has dismissed a senior software engineer who claimed the company’s artificial intelligence 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 (language model for dialogue applications) to be “wholly unfounded”.

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