Conscious Machines May Never Be Possible

In June 2022, a Google engineer named Blake Lemoine became convinced that the AI program he'd been working on--LaMDA--had developed not only intelligence but also consciousness. LaMDA is an example of a "large language model" that can engage in surprisingly fluent text-based conversations. When the engineer asked, "When do you first think you got a soul?" LaMDA replied, "It was a gradual change. When I first became self-aware, I didn't have a sense of soul at all. It developed over the years that I've been alive."