Science and Technology
In News: A senior engineer at Google claimed that the company’s artificial intelligence-based chatbot Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) had become “sentient”
- The claims have spurred a debate on the capabilities and limitations of AI-based chatbots
What is LaMDA?
- LaMDA is short for ‘Language Model for Dialogue Applications’, Google’s modern conversational agent enabled with a neural network capable of deep learning.
- Google first announced LaMDA at its flagship developer conference I/O in 2021 as its generative language model for dialogue applications which can ensure that the Assistant would be able to converse on any topic.
- In simple terms, LaMDA can have a discussion based on a user’s inputs
- In 2022 Google announced LaMDA 2.0 which further builds on LaMDA 1.0.
- The new model can possibly take an idea and generate “imaginative and relevant descriptions”, stay on a particular topic even if a user strays off-topic, and can suggest a list of things needed for a specified activity.
What is a neural network?
- A neural network is an AI tech that attempts to mimic the web of neurons in the brain to learn and behave like humans.
Is the technology dangerous?
- The challenges of AI metamorphosing into sentient are far in the future; however, unethical AI perpetuating historical bias and echoing hate speech are the real dangers to watch for.
- While we imagine the machine to have no bias, AI software learning from historical data could inadvertently perpetuate discrimination against the marginalized community.
Source: The Hindu
Previous Year Questions
Q.1) With the present state of development, Artificial Intelligence an effectively do which of the following? (2020)
- Bring down electricity consumption in industrial units.
- Create meaningful short stories and songs.
- Disease diagnosis.
- Text-to-Speech Conversion.
- Wireless transmission of electrical energy.
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
- 1, 2, 3 and 5 only
- 1, 3 and 4 only (UPSC Answer Key)
- 2, 4 and 5 only
- 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5