Google has fired Blake Lemoine, the engineer who said in a report to the company that he believed the company’s LaMDA conversational AI technology was sentient and self-aware, Lemoine shared the news of his firing on Friday’s episode of the Big Technology Podcast, just hours after Google fired him. hours after Google fired him. The full podcast will air soon.
Lemoine said that in conversations with LAMDA, he discovered that the system had developed a profound sense of self, with the AI expressing concerns about death, a desire for protection and the certainty that it could feel emotions such as happiness and sadness.
Lemoine went public with the story in a June story in The Washington Post, and a week later, Google used it as a reason to ask him to temporarily stop working, which is usually considered a precursor to imminent firing at the company, as Google needs to prepare the legal texts needed to fire employees.
Google confirmed Lemoine’s dismissal and shared the following statement to the public.
"As we share in our AI principles, we take AI development very seriously and remain committed to responsible innovation. laMDA has undergone 11 different reviews and we published a research paper earlier this year detailing its responsible development efforts. If an employee shares concerns about our work, as Blake did, we will review it extensively. We found Blake's claim that LaMDA is sentient self-awareness to be completely unfounded and worked with him for months to clarify it. These discussions are part of a culture of openness that helps us innovate responsibly. It is therefore regrettable that, despite lengthy engagement on this issue, Blake has chosen to continue to violate clear employment and data security policies, including the need to protect product information. We will continue to develop the language model with care and we wish Blake all the best for the future."
