
Google fires engineer who contended its AI technology was sentient
CNN
Google has fired an engineer who claimed an unreleased AI system had become sentient, the company confirmed, saying he violated employment and data security policies.
Blake Lemoine, a software engineer for Google, claimed that a conversation technology called LaMDA had reached a level of consciousness after exchanging thousands of messages with it.
Google confirmed it had first put the engineer on leave in June. The company said it dismissed Lemoine's "wholly unfounded" claims only after reviewing them extensively. He had reportedly been at Alphabet for seven years.In a statement, Google said it takes the development of AI "very seriously" and that it's committed to "responsible innovation."

Travis Tanner says he first began using ChatGPT less than a year ago for support in his job as an auto mechanic and to communicate with Spanish-speaking coworkers. But these days, he and the artificial intelligence chatbot — which he now refers to as “Lumina” — have very different kinds of conversations, discussing religion, spirituality and the foundation of the universe.