Context: Recently, Google put one of its employees, Blake Lemoine, on paid leave after he had made claims that one of the company’s AI technologies, LaMDA, is sentient. 

Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA)

• It is a machine-learning language model created by Google as a chatbot that is supposed to mimic humans in conversation.
• It is enabled with a neural network capable of deep learning.
• The algorithm is trained using 1.56 trillion words of public dialogue data and web text on diverse topics.
• The neural network built on Google's open-source neural network, Transformer, extracted more than 137 billion parameters from this massive database of language data.
• The LaMDA 0.1 was unveiled at Google's annual developer conference in May 2021, and the LaMDA 0.2 in 2022.

Neural network

• It is an AI tech that attempts to mimic the web of neurons in the brain to learn and behave like humans.
• Early efforts in building neural networks targeted image recognition.
• The artificial neural network (ANN) needs to be trained in a specific manner before being commanded.

History of chatbots

• Joseph Weizenbaum of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory built ELIZA, a computer program with which users could chat.
• ALICE (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity), another early chatbot developed by Richard Wallace, was capable of simulating human interaction.

How is LaMDA different from other chatbots?

• It is different from various current chatbots like 'Ask Disha'.
• 'Ask Disha' is the chatbot of the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC) and are routinely used for customer engagement.
• The repertoire of topics and chat responses is narrow.
• The dialogue is predefined and often goal-directed.
• LaMDA is a non-goal-directed chatbot that dialogues on various subjects.

The Turing test

• The Turing Test is a method of inquiry in artificial intelligence (AI) for determining whether or not a computer is capable of thinking like a human being.
• The test is named after Alan Turing, the founder of the Turing Test.
• The original Turing Test requires three terminals, each of which is physically separated from the other two.
• One terminal is operated by a computer, while the other two are operated by humans.

Is the technology dangerous?

• Unethical AI perpetuating historical bias and echoing hate speech are the real dangers to watch for.
• AI software learning from historical data could inadvertently perpetuate discrimination.