Is this robot sentient? Q&A with AI expert on debate over Google's chatbot software

The debate over a robot's ability to have human-like feelings reignited over the weekend following a Washington Post report about a Google engineer who claimed that one of the company's chatbot programs was sentient. Blake Lemoine is a 7-year Google vet who works for its Responsible AI team. He engaged in chats with the company's Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA), which learns from language databases and is powered by machine learning. Lemoine tried to convince Google executives that the AI was sentient. After the Post story published, Lemoine posted conversations he had with LaMDA.