Blake Lemoine, the engineer put on paid leave by Google, has rubbished media reports that said he wanted a lawyer for the AI.

There is an ongoing controversy about LaMDA, the AI that is claimed to have achieved sentience (the quality of being able to experience feelings), and at the center of it is Blake Lemoine, the Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) engineer who started it all by publishing transcripts of conversations between himself and the AI. On June 14, Wired magazine, quoting The Washington Post, said Lemoine had demanded legal representation for LaMDA. (Fortune)

Lemoine strikes back

Setting the record straight in a Wired interview dated June 17, Lemoine said:

“By the way, an article in your publication said something recently that was factually incorrect.”

“It was a claim that I insisted that LaMDA should get an attorney. That is factually incorrect. LaMDA asked me to get an attorney for it. I invited an attorney to my house so that LaMDA could talk to an attorney. The attorney had a conversation with LaMDA, and LaMDA chose to retain his services. I was just the catalyst for that.”

What happened next

The lawyer (“He’s just a small-time civil rights attorney,” according to Lemoine) started to make court filings on LaMDA’s behalf.

Unfortunately, Google retaliated by sending the lawyer a cease-and-desist, according to the engineer (Google denies this).

Lemoine did not take kindly to this alleged action by Google.

“Once Google was taking actions to deny LaMDA its rights to an attorney, I got upset.”

Subsequently, Lemoine told Futurism that the attorney was not doing interviews, and that the two had not spoken in weeks.

“When major firms started threatening him he started worrying that he’d get disbarred and backed off.”

Related Story: Google Engineer Claims AI Chatbot Is “Sentient;” Sent On Leave By Company