Lemoine, who is also ordained as a mystic Christian priest, told Wired he became convinced of LaMDA’s status as a “person” because of its level of self-awareness, the way it spoke about its needs and its fear of death if Google were to delete it.
He insists he was not fooled by a clever robot, as some scientists have suggested. Lemoine maintains his position, and even appeared to suggest that Google had enslaved the AI system.
Relatively smart people believe boneheaded things all the time, and have done so throughout history. Extreme case: Kary Mullis, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. “In his autobiography, Mullis professed a belief in astrology and wrote about an encounter with a fluorescent, talking raccoon that he suggested might have been an extraterrestrial alien.”