Along with AII comes manufactured authenticity, which may deceive followers to invest time, thought, emotion and trust in them. This perception of human personality translates to a form of dependence and vulnerability shared by followers. This vulnerability, however, is not shared person-to-person, but person-to-team-of-tech-people.

More so than simple awareness, sentience can be defined as the ability to feel feelings, to be moved and driven by those feelings and, importantly, to be aware of others and their feelings. It’s possible that LaMDA met that last criterion (it seemed to know that it was speaking to a specific Google engineer), but whether it’s able to feel emotions is contested, to say the least. LaMDA was only doing what it was taught to do, make calculations to put a sequence of words together to form a response. Besides, it’s not the only AI of its kind with these types of capabilities.

Paro, which has been used in Japan and through Europe since 2003, has helped demonstrate that technology can be used and embraced in previously-unheard-of ways for eldercare. The robot seal, which responds to touch and makes eye contact, has been found to reduce patient and caregiver stress, to stimulate interaction between patients and caregivers and to improve the socialization of patients. 

By the year 2020, humans are expected to lose a net of 5.1 millions of jobs to robots and artificial intelligence, according to a report from the World Economic Forum (WEF). In the report, 15 economies that make up 65 percent – about 1.9 billion workers – of the total global workforce were surveyed. About 7 million jobs will be lost while 2 million will be gained due to technological change in these developed and emerging nations.