How close are we to creating a 'conscious' AI?

From Ex Machina to A.I. Artificial Intelligence, many of the most popular science fiction blockbusters feature robots becoming sentient. But is this really possible in reality? This week, Blake Lemoine, a senior software engineer at Google hit the headlines after he was suspended for publicly claiming that the tech giant's LaMDA (Language Model for Dialog Applications) had become sentient. The 41-year-old, who describes LaMDA as having the intelligence of a'seven-year-old, eight-year-old kid that happens to know physics,' said that the programme had human-like insecurities. One of its fears, he said was that it is'intensely worried that people are going to be afraid of it and wants nothing more than to learn how to best serve humanity.'