AI chatbots don't need to be sentient, they just need to work

One may forgive customer service technology users for laughing out loud at the suggestion of AI gaining sentience. They have a difficult time simply bringing their chatbots online to solve basic customer problems, let alone assigning them metaphysical characteristics. This comes as rogue ex-Google engineer Blake Lemoine said he believes that Google's LaMDA, a large language model in development, is sentient. While chatbot technology is evolving, the bots available in today's market are nowhere near sentient, according to a panel of contact center technology users and other experts. Much more work needs to be done to make customer service chatbots integrate with existing enterprise IT to automate even the simplest tasks.