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Could Google's LaMDA Really Be Sentient?
Futureproof with Jonathan McCrea
English - June 19, 2022 10:00 - 43 minutes - 40.2 MB - ★★★★★ - 11 ratingsScience radio Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Whether AI is capable of reaching the point of sentience has long been debated; and with the news this week around Blake Lemoine - an engineer at Google who has claimed that the firm's LaMDA AI system has achieved just that - the conversation has been given a new lease of life.
It begs the question - at what point do we call something sentient? And does it even matter, if a computer programme is actually sentient if it appears to be thoughtful, self-aware and reflective?
To tease out these threads and discuss the story of LaMDA in general, Jonathan is joined by Dr. Anya Belz, Professor of Computer Science at DCU & The ADAPT Centre as well as Dr. Benjamin Cowan, Assistant Professor at UCD's School of Information & Communication Studies and Investigator at The ADAPT Centre.