The next (r)evolution: AI v human intelligence

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.