The search engine giant officially opened its AI Test Kitchen, which was teased in July. This is a space for Google to experiment with various AI-related technologies, and these innovations are moving beyond the internal test phases to the general public, including the notorious LaMDA 2 chatbot. For the uninitiated, LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) is an advanced AI-driven chatbot that began popping up in the news when a Google engineer announced it had achieved sentience. Google has since dismissed these notions and fired the engineer-in-question. In other words, the chatbot is likely not self-aware, though it’s most certainly great at appearing to be, which we can find out by signing up with Google for a one-on-one conversation. The public rollout is being used to test various parameters and features, as well as to minimize future risks of LaMDA adopting some of the internet’s less savory characteristics. This is similar reasoning behind Meta releasing their own chatbot, BlenderBot, to the public. Google remains mum regarding other technologies that will become available to the public via the AI Test Kitchen pipeline, though they say more innovations are coming. LaMDA 2 is available now, but you must sign up to request an invite. Once you do, Google will pass out invitations in small batches throughout the coming weeks to US smartphone users. The chatbot will be available for both iOS and Android.
