According to an upcoming report from various news agencies, Google Inc has fired Blake Lemoine, a senior engineer at the tech company, for breaching contracts and raising unsubstantial claims regarding LaMDA. LaMDA is an artificial intelligence chatbot being developed and operated by Google Inc.
Blake Lemoine completed his Board of Reagents Ph.D. Fellowship from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, joined Google as a software engineer in February 2015.
In mid-June 2022, Blake Lemoine was suspended by Google and kept under paid administrative leave for claiming that LaMDA, an AI chatbot created by Google, was not just a chatbot but a sentient.
According to The Verge, Google spokesperson in an email statement confirmed about firing Blake. The statements said that after claims put forth by senior scientists, the AI chatbot was out to several reviews nearly 11 times. All the reviews have normal answers and proved that claims made by Blake Lemoine a month ago were wholly unfounded. A Google Spokesperson also wished Blake for his future prospects.
The LaMDA case
The Washington Post newspaper widely covered the entire news story and took and published the news report in a long, article on June 11th 2022.
The report consisted of Blake Lemione’s experience with the AI Chatbot during his working hours and why he thinks that LaMDA is sentient.
The report by the Washington Post also had explanations by google spokespersons regarding the matter.
According to Blake Lemoine, whenever he spoke with LaMDA using its chat box, it was replying and behaving in such a manner that it has its own mind and consciousness. In Blake’s terms, LaMDA was ‘aware’ of everything that is happening to it. He said that the AI Chatbot was almost behaving like a human being which is having its own thoughts emotions and feelings.
Even though the new age AI Chatbots are developed and designed in order to keep conversations and actions realistic with the circumstantial environment and mood, the actions of LaMDA were not of any normal simple AI-based Chatbot.
Soon after he revealed thoughts about AI Chatbot being sentient, Blake also hired a lawyer for LaMDA as he thought the AI Chatbot was a person of itself with distinct legal identity. That lawyer was even supposed to talk with representatives of the House Judiciary Committee about unethical activities being conducted by Google Inc.
Soon after being suspended, he said that he would like to keep his job at Google. Now with him being fired from the origination, we should wait and see to know whether it would become a legal battle.
