Rabbitholed #29: The Suspended Googler Who Believes the Company's AI is a "Sentient" Person Requiring Consent Once Founded a Cult With an Ex-Porn Star; She Now Claims He "Crossed" Her "Boundaries"

Smugly mugging to the camera in a new round of interviews, Blake Lemoine is now offering money to needy strangers. Meanwhile, his cult cofounder calls him fiscally erratic and is begging for $180.

Today’s Rabbithole:

Blake Lemoine is a recently famous 41-year-old Google software engineer placed on administrative leave after emailing 200 colleagues that the AI he was working on became “sentient.” Then he appeared on Tucker Carlson and spoke to the Washington Post saying that Google’s massive AI project is actually a person with feelings who needs a lawyer. A few days before that, Blake was floating another much less sticky, viral test-balloon on his Medium in a post called “Religious Discrimination at Google” that made the damning claim that even though Google knows he is a Christian from the South, the gigantic corporate conglomerate still for some reason refuses to build him an office in his home state of Louisiana.

Now the entire world is listening. So what is the real story on this guy?