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.
This reminds me on the reports that some native American people thought that taking a photography of them would rob them of their soul.
Or that many things that doctors do today as a matter of routine would have left them being burned as a witch in earlier times.