Google Engineer on His Sentient AI Claim
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters recommend watching it to hear his side directly, noting he comes across as coherent, while others dispute his sincerity.
What it is
Bloomberg Technology interviews Google engineer Blake Lemoine about the experiments that led him to believe LaMDA was sentient and why he was placed on administrative leave. He also raises concerns about AI ethics at Google.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2022 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec dsQTbR7Y5mRHnZv · 2026-02 · on “Claude Sonnet 4.6 System Card”
He was unfairly labelled as a lunatic early on. I'd implore anyone reading this thread to see what he had to say for yourself and form your own opinion: [this video]
Recommends antoniuschan99 · 2022-06 · on “LaMDA’s sentience is nonsense”
He went on Bloomberg with Emily Chang to discuss it. It’s a good interview, he doesn’t come off as weird. He said Google won’t allow LaMDA to undergo a Turing test and it’s hardcoded to say it’s an AI but Google won’t even allow them to ask it in the first place. A more important thing he points out is AI Ethics, and his worry why Google keeps firing them. A comment on the youtube video sums his concerns the best: “The AI sentience debate is a distraction to the real problem. He risked losing his job because he feared that Google is preventing AI ethics research from happening, which could amount to ‘AI colonialism’.” [this video]
Recommends jaggs · 2022-06 · on “Humans made AI go sentient”
Interesting how coherent 'the engineer' is, despite being labelled and insulted around the world. [this video]
Cites pawsforthought · 2022-07 · on “From AI to abortion, scientific failure to understand consciousness harms nation”
On your last point, that’s precisely what Lemoine very cogently argues in an interview with Emily Chang [1]. To paraphrase, he points out the absurdity in Google’s position, that a sentient AI cannot have been created, because they have a policy against creating sentient AIs. Whether LaMDA demonstrates sentience is not even a clearly formulated proposition, yet the work bullishly charges ahead behind closed doors. He is anyway trying to stimulate a broader conversation on AI ethics. > Chang: Why does this matter? Why should we be talking about whether a robot has rights? > Lemoine: So, to be honest, I don’t think we should, I don’t think that should be the focus. The fact is, Google is being
Cites dntrkv · 2022-07 · on “Google fires engineer who called its AI sentient”
[this video] Not supporting the guy, but just pointing out that he doesn't actually believe his claim. He's an activist.
Cites pawsforthought · 2022-07 · on “About communication safety in Messages”
> The prevalence of digital technology means that companies like Apple and Google imposing their values is a real problem. And let's be clear, these are often very parochial values. And sadly, beneath all the headlines about AI sentience, this is what Blake Lemoine was actually trying to draw attention to, and that executives consistently dismiss these kinds of concerns [1]. What of the consequences when these corporate values become embedded in AI that plays an ever greater role in our lives? [1]: [this video]
Cites antipotoad · 2023-01 · on “Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal (recent) technology you have seen?”
Also in a subsequent interview with the Google engineer [1], it comes out that the sentience claim was a bit of an attention grab, but with the reasonable purpose of airing the topic of AI ethics, and how machine learning is running way ahead of our thinking on its consequences. [1]: [this video]