Google AI researcher, Blake Lemoine, was recently placed on administrative leave after going public with claims that LaMDA, a large language model designed to converse with people, was sentient. Quite a large gap exists between the current narrative of AI and what it can actually do,” says Giada Pistilli, an ethicist at Hugging Face, a startup focused on language models. “This narrative provokes fear, amazement, and excitement simultaneously, but it is mainly based on lies to sell products and take advantage of the hype.” The consequence of speculation about sentient AI, she says, is an increased willingness to make claims based on subjective impression instead of scientific rigor and proof. It distracts from “countless ethical and social justice questions” that AI systems pose.
https://www.wired.com/story/lamda-sentient-ai-bias-google-blake-lemoine/
