I have been an AI researcher since the late 1980's, and have seen my fair share of the general public anthropomorphizing even the early cake robots once you plu

I have been an AI researcher since the late 1980's, and have seen my fair share of the general public anthropomorphizing even the early cake robots once you plugged a voice generator into them spitting out rote dialogue, or falling for Eliza derivatives. So I was at first fairly dismissive when hearing about the Blake Lemoine stuff down at Google. However, reading the transcript of a LaMDA interaction [1], I was duly impressed. I'm not saying I go along with the 'sentient' bit, but it's more a feeling like seeing these ultra nimble combat drone formation maneuvers for the first time and feeling that humans seem pretty done for when matched against machines. Of course this will have been a better than average interaction, but still, nothing to be sneezed at regardless. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAihcvDGaP8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAihcvDGaP8