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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Technology
Rachelle Abbott

Tech & Science Daily: Does Google’s AI chatbot have feelings? & we’re at London Tech Week 2022

Google on a mobile phone (Yui Mok/PA) (Picture: PA Wire)

Theo Blackwell MBE, London’s Chief Digital Officer has been speaking to us at London Tech Week, about the ethics behind using AI.

He said big tech firms experimenting with artificial intelligence should be open about what they’re doing.

It’s as a Google engineer has been put on leave, after claiming that one of the company’s chatbots can express thoughts and feelings.

The 41-year-old employee, called Blake Lemoine, said the ‘laMDA’ chatbot - which was designed to have free-flowing conversations about almost anything - had conversations with him about rights and personhood.

In the transcript of their conversation which Lemoine shared online, the chatbot claimed to be sentient, and said it had emotions, including a “a very deep fear of being turned off”.

In response to Blake’s claims, Google said ethicists and technologists have reviewed his concerns, and have told him the evidence doesn’t support his claims.

Plus as London Tech Week begins we speak with Elka Goldstein from Informa, the firm behind the event, about ‘unicorns’ and what’s on show this week.

Microsoft has just shown off a load of new games coming to Xbox.

Yesterday’s Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase gave us a first look at the gameplay behind Starfield - a title that’s been in the works since 2018.

New data shows stars experience ‘quakes’ similar to the ones we have here on earth.

The data, on nearly two billion stars in the Milky Way, shows the ‘star-quakes’ occur on stars’ crusts, which cause the shape of the star to change.

Plus a study led by the University of Bristol has found humans actually have something called ‘nutritional intelligence’, and researchers at Nottingham Trent University are hoping to develop tests which are better at predicting resistance to new antibiotics before it occurs in patients. And why primates at a zoo in Finland are tuning into their own form of ‘Netflix/Spotify’.

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