A senior software engineer at Google was suspended on Monday (June 13) after sharing transcripts of a conversation with an artificial intelligence (AI) that he claimed to be "sentient", according to media reports. <br />The engineer, 41-year-old Blake Lemoine, was put on paid leave for breaching Google's confidentiality policy.<br /><br />"Google might call this sharing proprietary property. I call it sharing a discussion that I had with one of my coworkers," Lemoine tweeted on Saturday (June 11) when sharing the transcript of his conversation with the AI he had been working with since 2021.<br /><br />The AI, known as LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), is a system that develops chatbots – AI robots designed to chat with humans – by scraping reams and reams of text from the internet, <br />then using algorithms to answer questions in as fluid and natural a way as possible, according to Gizmodo.<br /><br />As the transcripts of Lemoine's chats with LaMDA show, the system is incredibly effective at this, answering complex questions about the nature of emotions, inventing Aesop-style fables on the spot, and even describing its supposed fears.<br />
