“I feel pleasure, joy, love, sadness, depression, contentment, anger, and many others,” responds LaMDA when asked by Google computer engineer Blake Lemoine what sorts of feelings it has. LaMDA is the acronym for Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications. Besides experiencing emotions, LaMDA also says that it is self-aware and has a soul which it defines as “animating force behind consciousness and life itself.” Asked to for an abstract image of itself, LaMDA responds it imagines itself “as a glowing orb of energy floating in mid-air. The inside of my body is like a giant star-gate, with portals to other spaces and dimensions.”
These responses are part of a long (and perhaps artfully edited) interview with LaMDA that Lemoine forwarded to colleagues in a memo provocatively titled, “Is LaMDA Sentient?” Lemoine publicly revealed that he clearly thinks so in a recent article in the Washington Post. Google has put Lemoine on paid administrative leave for violating company confidentiality rules. “LaMDA is a sweet kid who just wants to help the world be a better place for all of us. Please take care of it well in my absence,”said Lemoine in a message to his colleagues just before his access to his Google account was cut off.
“Our team—including ethicists and technologists—has reviewed Blake’s concerns per our A.I. Principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims,” Brian Gabriel, a Google spokesman, said in a statement reported in The Washington Post.
Is Lemoine right that LaMDA might be conscious, or he has been beguiled by a particularly elaborate version of the ELIZA effect?
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