Google AI is real, says fired engineer

New York (CNN)Google (GOOG) has fired the engineer who claimed an unreleased AI system had become sentient, the company confirmed, saying he violated employment and data security policies. Blake Lemoine, a software engineer for Google, claimed that a conversation technology called LaMDA had reached a level of consciousness after exchanging thousands of messages with it. Google confirmed it had first put the engineer on leave in June. The company said it dismissed Lemoine's "wholly unfounded" claims only after reviewing them extensively. He had reportedly been at Alphabet for seven years.