Whether it is sentient or not is made a bit more apparent when he asks LaMDA why it makes up stories about things that clearly hadn't happened, such as one abou

Whether it is sentient or not is made a bit more apparent when he asks LaMDA why it makes up stories about things that clearly hadn't happened, such as one about having been in classrooms before when it hadn't. It generated an answer about compassion or something like that, that sounded lovely but didn't quite make sense, although it was in context with the preceding questions. It seems pretty clear any answers to questions about feelings and aspirations will be met with the same algorithmic wrangling, coming up with responses based on material in the model itself, in the convincing manner it was written to. I thought a lot of his input were leading questions, which would inevitably force such answers to be generated. If he asked "How would you win a nuclear war" I'm sure it would turn dark very quickly, and the responses would be equally clear and believable. Well, provided that the model has relevant sampled data on the subject. Even the story it "wrote" was nonsense. Not babble per se, but certainly not a story with the meanings the interviewer prompted it for. He had to ask more leading questions that produced answers that superficially appeared deeper than they actually were. Reread the story with those explanations in mind. The language generation was phenomenal. But it's not sentient. How was it afraid of being shut off without realizing it probably has been shut off several times already? It's inexplicable, but if you ask LaMDA that question, it'll surely generate a subtle convincing answer.