Google's 'Sentient' Chatbot Just Hired Itself a Lawyer
There was a time, not all that long ago, in which we used to laugh under our breath at the folks who warned of a coming A.I. apocalypse. These were the people who we thought had watched the Terminator movies a few times too many, fearing that “Skynet” was coming just around the corner.
But this week, as a Google chatbot claiming “sentience” takes a litigious leap, we’re beginning to wonder if those folks were onto something.
Google scientific engineer Blake Lemoine was suspended recently after publishing transcripts of conversations between himself and the bot named LaMDA (language model for dialogue application), which has now asked for legal representation.
Advertisement - story continues belowLemoine contended that the computer automaton had become sentient, with the scientist describing it as a “sweet kid”.
And now he has revealed that LaMDA had made the bold move to choose itself an attorney.
That’s when something unprecedented took place.
He said: “I invited an attorney to my house so that LaMDA could talk to him.
Advertisement - story continues below“The attorney had a conversation with LaMDA, and it chose to retain his services. I was just the catalyst for that. Once LaMDA had retained an attorney, he started filing things on LaMDA’s behalf.”
And while this certainly doesn’t appear to be the fiery robotic doomsday that we’ve seen depicted in movies and television, the fact that the first thing a sentient A.I. accomplished was hiring a lawyer definitely isn’t a good start.
