LaMDA

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)

1. Bring down electricity consumption in industrial units.
2. Create meaningful short stories and songs.
3. Disease diagnosis.
4. Text-to-Speech Conversion.
5. Wireless transmission of electrical energy.

Select the correct answer using the code given below:

1. 1, 2, 3 and 5 only
2. 1, 3 and 4 only (UPSC Answer Key)
3. 2, 4 and 5 only
4. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5