Council Post: Generative AI: Cloaked In Mystery And Debate

Long before former Google engineer Blake Lemoine publicly wondered if the LaMDA AI he was supposed to test for discriminatory speech was, in fact, a sentient being, the world wondered about the sentience of a chess-playing automaton called the Mechanical Turk. In the late 18th century, Wolfgang von Kempelen was an advisor of the Austrian-Hungary court. A self-trained expert ahead of his time in physics, science and machinery, he was also a close confidant of Empress Maria Theresa and, one day, had her ear while a French magician performed for the court. Asked his opinion of the Frenchman, Wolfgang dismissed him as a hack. His tricks were too easy to explain, and Wolfgang boasted he could easily build a machine that would be much more impressive and defy any explanation.