I'm an AI researcher and I've been following the details of the Lemoine case.

First of all, no AI has hired a lawyer. There are multiple reasons this is true but a big one is that AIs don't have the ability to participate in a contract. Hiring a lawyer is a contract situation.

Anyway, the case is complicated. In May, the Google CEO made a preposterous claim about the AI, based on a paper the team that developed PaLM (a later version of LamDA the AI) wrote about it. In that paper, they gave some distorted truths that, because of what the CEO said, were then repeated all over the media.

In the same time frame, Lemoine then made his fantastic assertions then went to his boss complaining about perils of the AI. His boss passed info up the chain, I understand, and the CEO did not want this getting out and damaging the business aspects of touting the AI. Hence the clampdown on Lemoine.

For the record, the paper and the CEO made extremely misleading assertions about the AI which is just a language processor and NOT sentient. And it is in no way sentient enough to hire a lawyer. It's just chatbot software. Also, even if the rumor is based on maybe Lemoine hiring an attorney, there is no legal basis to pursue a case on behalf of software claimed to be alive. This whole thing is BS that has blown up in the media like so much else. LamDA / PaLM is just simulation software written by a team of, basically, nerds and it has not come alive any more than an actor in a movie is a real person. It's a puppetshow, an act fooling the naive.

I'm an AI researcher and I've been following the details of the Lemoine case.

First of all, no AI has hired a lawyer. There are multiple reasons this is true but a big one is that AIs don't have the ability to participate in a contract. Hiring a lawyer is a contract situation.

Anyway, the case is complicated. In May, the Google CEO made a preposterous claim about the AI, based on a paper the team that developed PaLM (the AI) wrote about it. In that paper, they gave some distorted truths that, because of what the CEO said, were then repeated all over the media.

In the same time frame, Lemoine then made his fantastic assertions then went to his boss complaining about perils of the AI. His boss passed info up the chain, I understand, and the CEO did not want this getting out and damaging the business aspects of touting the AI. Hence the clampdown on Lemoine.

For the record, the paper and the CEO made extremely misleading assertions about the AI which is just a language processor and NOT sentient. And it is in no way sentient enough to hire a lawyer. It's just chatbot software. This whole thing is BS that has blown up in the media like so much else. PaLM is just simulation software written by a team of, basically, nerds and it has not come alive.