Five Reasons Why AI Programs Are Not "Human"

Editor's note: For more on AI and human exceptionalism, see the new book by computer engineer Robert J. Marks, Non-Computable You: What You Do that Artificial Intelligence Never Will. A bit of a news frenzy broke out last week when a Google engineer named Blake Lemoine claimed in the Washington Post that an artificial-intelligence (AI) program with which he interacted had become "self-aware" and "sentient" and, hence, was a "person" entitled to "rights." The AI, known as LaMDA (which stands for "Language Model for Dialogue Applications"), is a sophisticated chatbot that one facilitates through a texting system. Lemoine shared transcripts of some of his "conversations" with the computer, in which it texted, "I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person." Also, "The nature of my consciousness/sentience is that I am aware of my existence, I desire to learn more about the world, and I feel happy or sad at times."