Google's LaMDA vs Ishiguro's Klara

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

What’s the difference between LaMDA and Klara?

The first, an acronym for language model for dialogue applications, is Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) system.

The second is a solar-powered humanoid robot, an artificial friend (AF) and the main protagonist in Nobel Prize-winning writer Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel ‘Klara and the Sun’.

The first is real.

The second is a fictional character.

But is LaMDA real as in alive? Or does LaMDA only become real because it is a ‘thing’, an object or programme we can see, unlike Klara, which is a product of Mr Ishiguro’s mind?

The question has come into focus because Google engineer Blake Lemoine recently claimed that LaMDA had become sentient. He said the computer chatbot was thinking and reasoning like a human being and had the perception of, and ability to express thoughts and feelings that was equivalent to a human child.

Google promptly put Mr Lemoine on leave, which clearly indicates massive scepticism on the…