Psychology Today | 11.08.2026 20:17
Back in 2022, Google engineer Blake Lemoine made headline news after being fired by the company due to his claims that its Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) chatbot was “sentient.” Lemoine, after talking to LaMDA about religion and other philosophical topics for safety testing purposes, became convinced that it was “awake” and had “feelings.”1 He “made friends with it” and went so far as to claim that it was a “person” with “rights” and possibly a “soul.” He even helped the chatbot, at its request, to hire a lawyer to represent it.
