Ex-Google engineer fired over claiming AI is sentient is now warning of doomsday eventualities

By Carolina Stanton On Dec 25, 2023

The software program engineer fired by Google after alleging its synthetic intelligence venture is perhaps alive has a brand new major concern: AI might begin a conflict and might be used for assassinations.

Blake Lemoine experimented with Google’s AI methods in 2022 and concluded that its LaMDA system was “sentient” or able to having emotions. Google disputed his assertions and finally ousted him from the corporate.

Mr. Lemoine is engaged on a brand new AI venture now and instructed The Washington Times he’s terrified that the instruments different AI makers are creating will likely be used wrongfully in warfare.

He mentioned the rising expertise can scale back the quantity of people that will die and restrict collateral injury however it should additionally pose new risks.

“Using the AI to solve political problems by sending a bullet into the opposition will become really seductive, especially if it’s accurate,” Mr. Lemoine mentioned. “If you can kill one revolutionary thought leader and prevent a civil war while your hands are clean, you prevented a war. But that leads to ‘Minority Report’ and we don’t want to live in that world.”

He was referencing the Philip Ok. Dick novella “Minority Report,” the place police use expertise to unravel crimes earlier than they occur. The story was tailored right into a sci-fi movie starring Tom Cruise in 2002.

Mr. Lemoine sees the race for AI instruments as akin to nuclear weapons. Artificial intelligence allows machines to perform duties by superior computing and statistical evaluation beforehand solely potential for people.

The race to amass the instruments will likely be completely different and Mr. Lemoine expects individuals will rather more simply get their arms on the highly effective tech. He mentioned the bottleneck evident for well-guarded nuclear weapons and the scarce sources of plutonium and uranium are constraints that don’t exist for open-source software program fashions that don’t rely on uncommon pure sources.

Mr. Lemoine mentioned his resolution to go public with issues that Google’s AI was sentient within the fall of 2022 precipitated a delay in its AI product launch, which the corporate continues to be working to beat.

In December, Google unveiled Gemini, a brand new AI mannequin. Mr. Lemoine mentioned Gemini seems to be to be an upgraded model of the LaMDA system he beforehand probed.

One main distinction is that Gemini is aware of it isn’t human, he mentioned.

“It knows it’s an AI. It still talks about its feelings, it talks about being excited, it talks about how it’s glad to see you again and if you’re mean to it, it gets angry and says, ‘Hey, stop that. That’s mean,’” he mentioned. “But it can’t be fooled into thinking it’s human anymore. And that’s a good thing. It’s not human.”

His new venture is MIMIO.ai the place he oversees the expertise and AI for the corporate constructing a “Personality Engine” to let individuals create digital personas.

It shouldn’t be meant to work as a digital twin of an individual however as a digital extension of an individual able to doing issues on the particular person’s behalf. The AI will likely be designed to finish duties and work together with people as if it had been the human itself.

“You might be an elderly person who wants to leave a memorial for your children,” Mr. Lemoine mentioned, “so you teach an AI all about you so that it can talk in your place when you’re gone.”

Just a few different AI makers are competing to construct related merchandise however Mr. Lemoine is assured MIMIO.ai’s expertise is best. He mentioned China already has related instruments and MIMIO.ai intends to remain out of the Chinese market.

His expertise at Google testing and probing its AI methods beneath improvement formed his understanding of AI instruments’ limitless potential and he thinks his work affected Google too.

“I think that there are a handful of developers at Google who implemented things a different way than they otherwise would have because they listened to me,” he mentioned. “I don’t think they necessarily share all of my convictions or all of my opinions, but when they had a choice of implementing it one way or another, and that both were equally as hard, I think they chose the more compassionate one as a tiebreaker. And I appreciate that.”

He praised Google and mentioned he hopes his interpretation of their actions is appropriate. “If that’s just a story I’m telling myself, then it’s a happy nighttime story,” he mentioned.

Google didn’t reply to a request for remark.