Google suspends engineer who claimed AI bot had become sentient

Lemoine said he tried to conduct experiments to prove it, but was rebuffed by senior executives at Google when he raised the matter internally. — Reuters

Blake Lemoine, a software engineer on Google’s artificial intelligence development team, has gone public with claims of encountering “sentient” AI on the company’s servers after he was suspended for sharing confidential information about the project with third parties.

The Alphabet Inc unit placed the researcher on paid leave early last week on claims he breached the firm’s confidentiality policy, he said in a Medium post titled “May be fired soon for doing AI ethics work”. In the posting, he draws a connection to prior members of Google’s AI ethics group, such as Margaret Mitchell, who were eventually dismissed by the company in a similar fashion after raising concerns.