Google Suspends Engineer Who Claimed Its AI System Is a Person
This isn&#x27;t really a story about AI; it&#x27;s a story about an incompetent engineer, and the way that humans are quick to assign consciousness and emotions to things. Children believe their dolls are real, people comfort their roombas when there&#x27;s a storm, and systems keep passing the Turing test because people <i>want</i> to be fooled. Ever since Eliza [1], and probably before, we&#x27;ve ascribed intelligence to machines because we want to, and because &#x27;can feel meaningful to talk to&#x27; is not the same as &#x27;thinks&#x27;.<p>It&#x27;s not a bad trait for humans to have - I&#x27;d argue that our ability to find patterns that aren&#x27;t there is at the core of creativity - but it&#x27;s something an engineer working on such systems should be aware of and accommodate for. Magicians don&#x27;t believe their own card tricks are real sorcery.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;ELIZA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;ELIZA</a>