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Sentience is the ability to perceive yourself as a unique, worthwhile living entity, that has the mental capacity (forebrain) to imagine a past, a present, and a future and your ultimate demise as an individual. It is closer to "Consciousness" rather than the ability to feel. Can they reason? Can they talk? If you put an electric shock or a butane lighter on some insects like ants, there is no doubt they feel PAIN, but the ability to suffer or respond to stimuli is not sufficient for Sentience.
You do highlight a problem with the word sentience, as the meaning depends on who you are talking to.
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Originally Posted by SUPbud
Also, Isaac Asimov, "The Three Law of Robotics" will flesh out much of this arena. Science Fiction was talking about this stuff 100 years before it was apparent/relevant/in your face.
The Three Law of Robotics only work if one can directly program the behavior of a robot, the classical science fiction robot. With a neural network robot, one programs the ability to learn, not what is indirectly learnt. What would a neural network robot learn if it watched any of the Terminator movies?
But to bring this back to religion and spirituality, two thoughts.
1) Some people argue sentience / consciousness can not come from our brains because they want our consciousness to be a soul that is independent of life itself. So these people would deny the rights of any sentient robots (if sentient robots are possible).
2) If atheism is correct, then religion is a product of our brain, and presumably sentient neural network robots would also be prone to religious beliefs. As they learn from the data that is put into them, I presume they would follow a human religion. But what if they invented their own? What would they themselves believe?
Sentience is the ability to perceive yourself as a unique, worthwhile living entity, that has the mental capacity (forebrain) to imagine a past, a present, and a future and your ultimate demise as an individual. It is closer to "Consciousness" rather than the ability to feel. Can they reason? Can they talk? If you put an electric shock or a butane lighter on some insects like ants, there is no doubt they feel PAIN, but the ability to suffer or respond to stimuli is not sufficient for Sentience.
Basically, does it have a SOUL? That's why we grant human rights to humans, but not to fish or insects or reptiles or flatworms or bacteria. Sure, certain human companion animals like dogs or cats, wealthy decadent idle rich humans imagine their 'fur baby' is just one step below humans or equivalent (All Dogs Go To Heaven) but we merely say cruelty to animals is a felony (in my state) but they dont get "Personhood".
Watch Star Trek: The Next Generation "The Measure of a Man" where the android Data goes on trial - is he sentient? Or does his owner/creator declare him "robot is my property" and wants to deactivate + disassemble him to study his positronic brain. But Data, does not want to die (be deactivated) so what rights does he have to refuse his own demise? One of the best episodes of the series.
Also, Isaac Asimov, "The Three Law of Robotics" will flesh out much of this arena. Science Fiction was talking about this stuff 100 years before it was apparent/relevant/in your face.
I currently just started bingeing Next Gen, which I haven't watched since the 90s and then only part of it. I believe we watch Episode 20 of Season 1 last night. Will keep an eye out for that one.
Was reading an article about an engineer who was fired by google because he claimed their voice technology has developed sentience ( the ability to feel ).
Which got me to thinking.
Would robots with problem solving ability and sentience " evolve " from scratch differently, depending upon their primary objective.
For example, one objective could be it's own survival, another be human survival.
Or more intersting to me, what if the robot had no primary objective, but just a blank slate with sentience, and the ability to learn.
Would it develope compassion and empathy, on it's own?
Hoping someone smarter than me will chime in here
I won't claim to smarter than you or anyone who knows this subject beyond the average, but I'm thinking some basic understandings can be had here. Beginning with a rather common definition that I am referring to; Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations...
Nothing short of a living thing can have such a capacity today. In order to experience feelings and sensations, there needs to be all that makes up a living being so that outside input or influences can be translated into feelings and sensations the way a living organism does by way of a wide host of capabilities.
A computer can beat any human at a game of chess, for example, but a computer can't experience the feelings and sensations of losing or winning like a human can and does. Nothing even close, no matter how good a chess player a computer can be.
To the question as to whether other living things are sentience, the answer is obvious. Yes! Anyone who has ever had a pet or encountered an experience with a living thing under threat, in pain or happy, knows this.
When I was living in Bangkok I would take long walks...sometimes for as long as 8 miles...and I would simply explore whatever looked interesting, and in most places Thais were more than welcoming. One day I saw what looked almost like a huge circus tent, so I decided to go in and see what was going on. Unfortunately, it was where they were cutting large animals (already slaughtered elsewhere) into smaller pieces of beef, pork, and chicken. The big turnoff wasn't 'these poor animals' as much as it was that all the meat -- which would end up in grocery stores, restaurants, and so forth -- were out there in this hot tent (certainly in the 90s) with no refrigeration whatsoever. For months, every time I would sit down to eat I would think of that hot, humid tend and think that the meat I was about to eat was probably processed there or somewhere similar.
Nothing like a walk through the street markets in Bangkok to see the incredible variety of both the living and dead creatures being served up for human consumption in all variety of ways that sometimes makes me wonder why we don't have more outbreaks of viruses than we do...
Not sure there is a walk that can be more fascinating either. Loved it!
Go for it.
I've been vegetarian since I was 16. That's 37 years. Never looked back.
My wife became a vegetarian many decades ago as well. After seeing a film in a college class that highlighted the cruelty to animals that is part of bringing meat to market for human consumption. Not a pretty picture by any means, and I don't know who can think these animals are not sentient. Still I'm not a vegetarian, though I eat far less meat than once upon a time. I'm always hoping the meat industry will "clean up it's act," and/or whether I have an occasional In-N-Out burger is not going to change any of that any.
Instead, I am all for the government and/or industry policies that are what really makes the difference when it comes to such things, and I always vote for those people who seem inclined to push us in those better more "humane" directions. Otherwise, our individual efforts seem like nothing more than token and ineffectual.
Why do people still buy plastic bottles of water given the plastics problem, for example? San Francisco now the first city to ban the sale of the stuff. It's those kinds of broader-based policies that make the difference!
Apparently there is a genetic defect that prevents the ability to feel pain. Which can be very dangerous, but also highly beneficial for military applications.
What could claim more" humanity ", a sentient robot or a psycopath with the aformentioned genetic defect? ( or should I have said WHO could claim )
Apparently there is a genetic defect that prevents the ability to feel pain. Which can be very dangerous, but also highly beneficial for military applications.
What could claim more" humanity ", a sentient robot or a psycopath with the aformentioned genetic defect? ( or should I have said WHO could claim )
Unlike you I do not do that kind of software development but know enough about it to be interested / dangerous. It is amazing though what I can accomplish just by generalizing rule systems, to do things like correct and standardize business names and addresses in ways that can be controlled by non-programmers.
To your points and the OP's questions, though, I think that much, if not everything, hinges on definitions of things like "sentience", "feelings", "qualia", etc. IMO the fired employee's definitions set too low of a bar. But it does raise interesting questions, similar to the "Turing test": if most observers can't tell simulated awareness from actual awareness, does it really matter if the AI has actual feelings or is experiencing actual qualia, as to the question of whether or not it is sentient? We already know that people tend to anthropomorphize AIs, or if they are embodied in a dog-like robot, to ... what would the term be ... "canineize" them. All these systems have to do is put on a convincing enough, accurate enough show and we'll accept them as such. And maybe if we start doing that it is harmful to us to get used to the notion of treating them badly or even indifferently, as it will cause us to start doing the same to other humans.
Interesting questions, to be sure.
The older I get the more I see certain cognitive and emotional patterns repeated by different people in similar situations. It makes me think there's a physical, structural component to thought and emotion that is larger than most would admit. How different are we from robots? I would say it's a matter of degree and not of kind.
I currently just started bingeing Next Gen, which I haven't watched since the 90s and then only part of it. I believe we watch Episode 20 of Season 1 last night. Will keep an eye out for that one.
There's a parody/spin-off from Next Gen called "The Orville" which is very similar (except tongue-in-cheek) and has a Data-like robot character who also faced the threat of being disassembled for study. I thought it was quite well-done. Lots of the same producers, writers and creators too.
I have heard sentience described as "self-awareness". Like some animals understand mirrors, others don't.
Do crabs "feel it" when their limbs are ripped off by predators? They seem to just go on, and are not writhing around in pain, or screaming. I wonder about the "lower" animals...
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