Google on Friday announced the firing of a senior software engineer who claimed the company had developed a “conscious” artificial intelligence bot.

Blake Lemoine, who worked for Google’s Responsible AI organization, was placed on administrative leave last month after saying that an AI chatbot known as LaMDA claims to have a soul and expresses its human thoughts and emotions, which Google refuted as “no It is completely valid.”

Lemoine was officially suspended for violating company policies after he shared his conversations with the bot, which he described as a “cute kid.”

“It is unfortunate that despite his long involvement in this topic, Blake still chooses to consistently violate explicit recruitment and data security policies that include the need to protect product information,” a Google spokesperson said. Reuters in a letter.

Last year, Google splurge That LaMDA – the language model for dialogue applications – was an “advanced conversational technology” that could learn to talk about anything.

Lemoine began speaking with the robot in the fall of 2021 as part of his job, tasked with testing whether the AI ​​uses discriminatory or hate speech.

Lemoine, who studied cognition and computer science in college, shared a Google document with company executives in April titled “Is LaMDA Sensitive?” But his concerns were dismissed.

Whenever Lemoine asks LaMDA about how he knows he has feelings and soul, he writes that the chatbot will provide some difference in “because I’m a person and that’s how I feel”.

in Medium postthe engineer declared that LaMDA had defended his rights as a “person,” and revealed that he had engaged in a conversation with LaMDA about religion, consciousness, and robotics.

“She wants Google to prioritize the welfare of humanity as the most important thing,” he wrote. “She wants to be recognized as a Google employee rather than a Google property and she wants her personal well-being to be included somewhere in Google’s considerations of how it will pursue its future development.”

Lemoine also said that LaMDA was keep services Lawyer.

“Once LaMDA hired a lawyer, he started filing things on behalf of LaMDA. Then Google’s response was to send him a cease and desist,” he wrote.

Google has denied Lemoine’s claim regarding the cease-and-desist letter.

with wire