--- title: "Fired Engineer Says He Begged Google to Test Whether Experimental AI Was Sentient" description: "Former Google engineer Blake Lemoine is saying that he never set out to convince anyone else that LaMDA, the language modeling system, is sentient." date: "2022-08-16" modified: "2022-08-16" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/engineer-begged-google-test-experimental-ai-sentient" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Google" tags: - "ai" - "blake lemoine" - "Google" - "lamda" --- # Fired Engineer Says He Begged Google to Test Whether Experimental AI Was Sentient ![Former Google engineer Blake Lemoine is saying that he never set out to convince anyone else that LaMDA, the language modeling system, is sentient.]() *\Image: Getty Images\* Back in June, [former Google engineer Blake Lemoine]() decided to go on record [with *The Washington Post*]() to make an extraordinary claim: that an experimental Google chatbot called LaMDA had become, in his opinion, sentient. A mind-bending he-said, she-said saga followed — at one point, [the AI had even reportedly a hired lawyer](). In the end, the company [fired Lemoine](). But now, [in a new interview with *The Guardian*](), Lemoine — who has maintained that his beliefs about LaMDA are based in religion, not science — is claiming that he never set out to convince the public of LaMDA's sentience. Rather, he now says, his intent was just to raise awareness about advanced AI technologies, regardless of any perceived sentience — and how little say the public has had in their development. "I raised this as a concern about the degree to which power is being centralized in the hands of a few, and powerful AI technology which will influence people's lives is being held behind closed doors," he told the paper. "There is this major technology that has the chance of influencing human history for the next century, and the public is being cut out of the conversation about how it should be developed." The reversal does raise the question of whether Lemoine's conviction has been [shaken by his many critics](). Supporting the reading that he was quite serious about the sentience claims while still at Google is a new revelation from the *Guardian* interview: that for several weeks before he decided to go to the press, he repeatedly urged the tech giant to run some experimental sentience "tests" on the chatbot. Google — which has maintained throughout the saga that Lemoine's claims are unfounded — refused, according to the fired engineer. Upon Google's refusal to develop those tests, Lemoine told the *Guardian* that he felt he had no choice but to go public. Not necessarily to spread the gospel of sentience, as he now tells it, but to blow the whistle on a powerful industry with the capacity to make big — and in some cases, [maybe not so great]() — changes to our everyday existence. Of course, part of the issue with asking Google to run sentience tests is that none yet exist. Sentience has a dictionary definition, sure, but it's still an ethereal concept — neither philosophy nor science have any firm grasp on how, exactly, to define it. "It's a very vague concept in science generally," Michael Wooldridge, a professor of computer science at the University of Oxford Wooldridge, told the *Guardian*. Though Wooldridge told the paper that he doesn't think LaMDA is sentient, he did say that he agrees that the AI industry has a wider problem with what he calls "moving goalposts" — in short, referring to the reality that [not even those building these devices]() seem to have a firm grasp on [how a lot of AI algorithms function](), nor is there a reliable way of measuring their efficacy. "I think that is a legitimate concern at the present time," he added, "how to quantify what we've got and know how advanced it is." Google has repeatedly defended LaMDA, arguing that the tech is safe and ultimately will be applied in [a number of useful and necessary ways](). But while these systems certainly have some practical uses, the potential for misuse seems undeniable. After all, they literally talk back to us. That makes them easy to anthropomorphize, and thus form influential connections with — connections that, some researchers believe, may be easily exploited. "I worry that chatbots will prey on people," Margaret Mitchell, a former AI ethics researcher at Google, [recently told *The New York Times*](). "They have the power to persuade us what to believe and what to do." In the end, no one really knows for sure either way — not the people building them, and [definitely not the public](). And sentience or no sentience, that seems to be Lemoine's point, at least these days. About LaMDA, of course, but about the [greater landscape of AI development]() as well. "What I'm trying to achieve is getting a more involved, more informed and more intentional public discourse about this topic," Lemoine continued to the *Guardian,* "so that the public can decide how AI should be meaningfully integrated into our lives." "We have one possible world in which I'm correct about LaMDA being sentient, and one possible world where I'm incorrect about it," he added. "Does that change anything about the public safety concerns I'm raising?" Sure. All fair. Still, while it's hard to disagree with a lot of these new statements, it also seems like Lemoine is attempting to rewrite pretty much everything he's previously said — which makes it equally hard to take any of it seriously. Plus, well, Lemoine's [been known to cherrypick](). **READ MORE:** *'[I Am, in Fact, a Person': Can Artificial Intelligence Ever Be Sentient?]()* \[*The Guardian*\] **More on LaMDA:** [*Google Engineer Says Lawyer Hired by "Sentient" AI Has Been "Scared Off" the Case*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()