When a Google soft­ware engi­neer claimed that a piece of chat­bot soft­ware was sen­tient, it was a major sto­ry. Just like your dog is sen­tient, could it be that some com­put­er code – a chat­bot sys­tem called LaM­DA – has feelings?

But was it tru­ly sen­tient, or was it pulling algo­rith­mic wool over our eyes? Were we sim­ply being fooled by high-tech mim­ic­ry? In this, our reg­u­lar look at crit­i­cal think­ing: Skep­tic Check, we ask what is the evi­dence that this sys­tem is sen­tient. Also, even A.I. that’s not sen­tient can still be pow­er­ful – and that has seri­ous implications. 

Guests:

Blake Lemoine – Soft­ware engi­neer and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence researcher

Oren Etzioni – Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, and for­mer CEO at the Allen Insti­tute for AI in Seattle

Mark Coeck­el­bergh – Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy of Media and Tech­nol­o­gy, Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na, and author of ​“Robot Ethics“