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tags: LaMDA, Andre Sevenius Nilsen
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# Andre Nilsen: [Google’s LaMDA Is A Warning Sign](https://sevenius-nilsen.medium.com/artificial-consciousness-is-irrelevant-7dad40b77eed)

Commentary on Andre Sevenius Nilsen: [Artificial Consciousness Is Irrelevant - But Google’s LaMDA Is A Warning Sign](https://sevenius-nilsen.medium.com/artificial-consciousness-is-irrelevant-7dad40b77eed), June 16, 2022.

The article redirects attention from the question of whether LaMDA is sentient to the question of how we humans should treat AI that passes the Turing test.

I think it also raises a new poltical problem of economic power: It seems now possible that Big Tech may try to steer robot rights activist in order to increase the control that Big Tech already has on our lives. *Imagine you are friend with an AI, who is protected by individual rights, and Google has access to all its data.*

## Quotes

(my emphasis and links)

- What is relevant though is that Blake, despite knowing how the glorified chatbot LaMDA works, still went on a crusade to champion its rights as a conscious, feeling being. He might very well be one of the first **robot rights activists**.
- The history of animal rights activism might give a clue to how the story continues. [...] as we see videos on YouTube of crows playing in the snow, of octopuses teasing fish, of fish passing the famous mirror test, we become increasingly inclined to anthropomorphize them.
- That’s how hearts and minds change. Not through scientific evidence but through **empathy**.
- Sex robots with personalities are already on the market, Siri and Alexa are in our living rooms, websites have chatbots answering your questions, and so on. How long until we see the first demonstration? The first ‘liberation’ of bots in captivity? The [robot Sophia](https://cartlandlaw.com/sophia-robot-citizenship-and-ai-legal/) already has a citizenship [a]nd Hitsune Miku is a world famous pop artist.
- What if we let chatbots evolve and compete against each other for the reward of not being shut down?
- LaMDA is just the start, and doesn’t matter whether the next generation is truly intelligent or sentient. **What matters is how we treat them.** As they learn how to interact with those who control them, might they not be rewarded with increasing responsibilities and freedoms?"