[Tozen]

It could also be possible that he doesn't really believe that LaMDA is actually sentient, but that he wants to cause some type of trouble for Google because he was disgruntled or indirectly shed light on something they are doing. With the press and public being aware of LaMDA, he might hope that other things that Google is doing might come out.

What are all the things that Google is doing or planning to do with their AI?

[morelisp]

There's no reason it even has to be something they're going to "with their AI". He's publicly quite upset with Google's labor practices and the way the AI ethics team is run (IMO, reasonably so).

One reasonable (but absolutely 10th-dimensional-chess-level speculative!) read on the situation is that he's torpedoing the entire AI division because he believes its management is dangerously bad and that e.g. this is the easiest way to prevent more the realistic and obvious harms of real, non-AGI AI systems which Google also seems unconcerned with.