The Google engineer who sees company's AI as 'sentient' thinks a chatbot has a soul

Blake Lemoine poses for a portrait in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Blake Lemoine poses for a portrait in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Can artificial intelligence come alive? That question is at the center of a debate raging in Silicon Valley after a Google computer scientist claimed over the weekend that the company's AI appears to have consciousness. Inside Google, engineer Blake Lemoine was tasked with a tricky job: Figure out if the company's artificial intelligence showed prejudice in how it interacted with humans.