LaMDA

Recently, an engineer associated with Google has claimed that an Artificially Intelligent (AI) chatbot he was working on had become sentient and was showing the ability to think and reason like a human being.

Details –

• According to the employee, the AI was sentient enough to be compared to a human child in terms of expressing thoughts and feelings.
• He said that the chatbot, called LaMDA (language model for dialogue applications), was able to have conversations with him about rights and personhood.
• However, Google has stated that the claims about LaMDA being sentient are false and that the company has tons of evidence against it.

About LaMDA –

• LaMDA is Google’s modern conversational agent enabled with a neural network capable of deep learning.
• The algorithm is trained using 1.56 trillion words of public dialogue data and web text on diverse topics.
• The chatbot is not yet public, but users are permitted to interact with it.
• Google claims that LaMDA can make sense of nuanced conversation and engage in a fluid and natural conversation.

What is a Neural Network?

• A neural network is an AI tech that attempts to mimic the web of neurons in the brain to learn and behave like humans.
• Early efforts in building neural networks targeted image recognition.
• The artificial neural network (ANN) needs to be trained like a dog before being commanded. For example, during the image recognition training, thousands of specific cat images are broken down to pixels and fed into the ANN.
• Using complex algorithms, the ANN’s mathematical system extracts particular characteristics like the line that curves from right to left at a certain angle, edges or several lines that merge to form a larger shape from each cat image.
• The software learns to recognise the key patterns that delineate what a general ‘cat’ looks like from these parameters.

About Artificial Intelligence –

• Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment.
• The term is frequently applied to the project of developing systems endowed with the intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalise, or learn from past experience.
• AI algorithms are trained using large datasets so that they can identify patterns, make predictions and recommend actions, much like a human would, just faster and better.

Difference between AI and Regular Programming –

• Regular programs define all possible scenarios and only operate within those defined scenarios.
• AI ‘trains’ a program for a specific task and allows it to explore and improve on its own.
• A good AI programme ‘figures out’ what to do when met with unfamiliar situations. For example, Microsoft Word cannot improve on its own, but facial recognition software can get better at recognising faces the longer it runs.

Use of AI –

Currently the AI is being used in the following Things/Fields —

• • Virtual Assistant or Chatbots
  • Agriculture and Farming
  • Autonomous Flying
  • Retail, Shopping and Fashion
  • Security and Surveillance
  • Sports Analytics and Activities
  • Manufacturing and Production
  • Live Stock and Inventory Management
  • Self-driving Cars or Autonomous Vehicles
  • Healthcare and Medical Imaging Analysis
  • Warehousing and Logistic Supply Chain