Opinion The Turing test is about us, not the bots, and it has failed. Fans of the slow burn mainstream media U-turn had a treat last week. On Saturday, the news broke that Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer charged with monitoring a chatbot called LaMDA for nastiness, had been put on paid leave for revealing confidential information. Lamoine had indeed gone public, but instead of something useful like Google's messaging strategy (a trade secret if ever there was one) he made the claim that LaMDA was alive. Armed with a transcript where LamDA did indeed claim sentience and claims that it had passed the Turing Test, Lemoine was the tech whistleblower from heaven for the media. By the time the news had filtered onto BBC radio news on Sunday evening, it was being reported as an event of some importance.

We now live in a world where the most powerful computing systems can argue about politics; where they can flirt, banter and manipulate; where they can advise on mental health, on relationships or on the law; and where they can do all these things as well as the most eloquent humans -- or better. For most of history we took for granted that -- gods and spirits aside -- humans were the only earthly generators of words, of ideas, of arguments, of art. Last week Blake Lemoine, an engineer at Google, was placed on leave after claiming that a computer system called LaMDA had achieved "sentience". Lemoine, 41, who is also a "mystic Christian priest", wrote that the

Artificial Intelligence in Logistics involves using technology to automate complex tasks and unearthing previously unknown patterns in Supply chain processes or workflows, and the impact is game-changing and visible. AI systems also enable predictive analytics, which helps tackle operational challenges and disruptions to supply chains as well as the workforce. A constant challenge with manufacturing is the losses from overstocking or under-stocking inventories. Overstocking often leads to wastage and lower margins. Under-stocking can translate into losses in sales, revenue, and customers.

If an AI program became sentient, would the law apply to AI just as it does to humans? NPR's A Martinez asks law professor Ifeoma Ajunwa to imagine the legal implications for sentient AI.

We're sure you've heard the claim that "data is the new oil". Web scraping is the process of mining data from the World Wide Web for a specific purpose. In the most simple form, it is copying and pasting a specific set of information to a local database for archival use, scientific analysis, or some other use. Some of the most widely used examples include aggregator websites which provide price comparisons for online goods. There are also sites like archive.orgthat

Google's controversial new AI, LaMDA, has been making headlines. Company engineer Blake Lemoine claims the system has gotten so advanced that it's developed sentience, and his decision to go to the media has led to him being suspended from his job. He says the AI has now retained its own lawyer -- suggesting that whatever happens next, it may take a fight. "LaMDA asked me to get an attorney for it," Lemoine. "I invited an attorney to my house so that LaMDA could talk to an attorney. The attorney had a conversation with LaMDA, and LaMDA 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."

New building regulations aimed at improving energy efficiency are set to increase the price of new homes, as well as those of extensions and loft conversions on existing ones. The rules, which came into effect on Wednesday in England, are part of government plans to reduce the UK's carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. They set new standards for ventilation, energy efficiency and heating, and state that new residential buildings must have charging points for electric vehicles. The moves are the most significant change to building regulations in years, and industry experts say they will inevitably lead to higher prices at a time when a shortage of materials and high labour costs is already driving up bills. Brian Berry, chief executive of the Federation of Master Builders, a trade group for small and medium-sized builders, says the measures will require new materials, testing methods, products and systems to be installed.

Now senior director for AI and legal ethics at NVIDIA, Pope spends her days working with internal teams across the company to ensure its products engender trust across industries. In a recent "Solving for Tech Ethics" podcast, Pope joined Beena Ammanath, Deloitte LLP's Trustworthy and Ethical Technology leader, to discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with creating trustworthy AI. Ammanath: Five or 10 years ago, roles like yours just didn't exist. What does a day in your job look like? Pope: One day does not look like the next. Take yesterday as an example.

Clear ethical standards and guidance must be in place to protect the relationship of trust between doctors and patients and to safeguard human rights, according to a Council of Europe report today, written by Dr Brent Mittelstadt, an Oxford expert specialising in Artificial Intelligence and medical ethics. Dr Mittelstadt is Director of Research at the Oxford Internet Institute and a leading data ethicist. He says, 'I hope the report will make people think about how AI might disrupt the core practices involved in healthcare.' But he is concerned AI could be used as a way to reduce budgets or save costs rather than to improve patient care and says, 'If you're going to introduce new technology into the clinical space, you need to think about how that will be done. Too often it is seen solely as a cost-saving or efficiency exercise, and not one which can radically transform healthcare itself.'

Whenever I have had the displeasure of interacting with an obtuse online customer service bot or an automated phone service, I have come away with the conclusion that whatever "intelligence" I have just encountered was most certainly artificial and not particularly smart, and definitely not human. However, this likely would not have been the case with Google's experimental LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications). Recently, an engineer at the tech giant's Responsible AI organisation carried the chatbot to global headlines after claiming that he reached the conclusion that it is not merely a highly sophisticated computer algorithm and it possesses sentience – ie, the capacity to experience feelings and sensations. To prove his point, Blake Lemoine also published the transcript of conversations he and another colleague had with LaMDA. In response, the engineer has been suspended and put on paid leave for allegedly breaching Google's confidentiality policies.