Is Artificial Intelligence Really Becoming Self-Aware?

Is Artificial Intelligence Really Becoming Self-Aware?

According to Google engineer Blake Lemoine, an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot application called LaMDA, short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications, has achieved sentience, or independent self-aware consciousness. Is this good or bad? And just what is “self-awareness”? Can non-humans – animals, and even LaMDA – be self-aware? Where might such questions be taking us?