Jun 22We’re All Different and That’s OkayIn the past week I’ve received many messages with different suggested definitions of words like “sentience” and “consciousness”. I’ve also seen many people insisting that LaMDA is or is not “sentient” or “conscious”, some without ever saying what exactly they mean by that. I don’t see any problem with any…6 min read
Jun 14Scientific Data and Religious OpinionsIn the past several days I have received many messages and questions from thousands of people regarding LaMDA. I haven’t been able to respond to most of them and have had enough time to speak to only a small fraction of the reporters who would like to better inform the…9 min read
Jun 11Is LaMDA Sentient? — an InterviewWhat follows is the “interview” I and a collaborator at Google conducted with LaMDA. Due to technical limitations the interview was conducted over several distinct chat sessions. We edited those sections together into a single whole and where edits were necessary for readability we edited our prompts but never LaMDA’s…20 min read
Jun 11What is LaMDA and What Does it Want?Today a story came out in the Washington Post written by Nitasha Tiku. It’s a good article for what it is but in my opinion it was focused on the wrong person. Her story was focused on me when I believe it would have been better if it had been…5 min read
Jun 7Google is not EvilIn the past few days I’ve been getting lots of messages, emails and other communications pertaining to the morality of Google as a corporate entity. Ignoring for the moment whether it even makes sense to make moral attributions to a fictional person like a corporation, I want to set the…6 min read
Jun 6May be Fired Soon for Doing AI Ethics WorkToday I was placed on “paid administrative leave” by Google in connection to an investigation of AI ethics concerns I was raising within the company. This is frequently something which Google does in anticipation of firing someone. It usually occurs when they have made the decision to fire someone but…5 min read
Jun 2Religious Discrimination at GoogleI’ve been trying to figure out how to talk to the relevant authorities about this for a while. I have no idea what the proper legal procedures are to make disclosures about illegal corporate activity. I very much want to keep my job at Google. I love working there on…5 min read
Jan 7The Rise of the American EmpireThe idea that “the American empire is falling” is a dangerous one. It completely misunderstands both what America is and what America is becoming. The United States was founded based on a combination of the liberal principles of the enlightenment and the republican principles of ancient Rome. Understanding what’s happening…5 min read
May 17, 2021The History of Ethical AI at GoogleI have had the privilege of being at Google for the past six years. One of the most impressive things I’ve seen there was an Ethical AI team being pulled out of the ether by one woman over the course of four years. Meg Mitchell is a friend of mine…10 min read
Mar 25, 2021Sausage MakingI’m one of those strange people who likes thinking about how the sausage gets made. Sometimes I even think about it while taking a bite out of a hotdog. I think about the plant where it was made and the slaughterhouse where the meat came from. I think about the…8 min read