unforum

[Motoss]

Self-Awareness doesn't not sentience make. A tiger is self-aware, but we don't classify it as a sentient creature. Why not?

[Kagehi Kossori]

The fundimental problem is that no one has a definition for sentient that is that precise. In general, it seems to imply something more like, "can think in act in ways that are noticably human, including invention and creativity". The problem is that even that is being eroded. There is really no real solid definition. In the loosest, anything self aware is sentient, in the most strict, it is anything capable of inventing and using tools. But even that definition places some species in the 'sentient' category, which could be argued to not be as sentient as we are. Like most concepts that try to create a clear deliniation between us and the rest of the universe, it fails the moment you examine it too closely. There are levels of sentience, not just, "that thing is, but that other thing isn't" and logically, there is little functional difference between the sentience of an AI, when it has human level skill, and say Steven Hawkings, who without special apperatus, also can't move or respond to the real world.

[thebruce]

but alas, I'm not speaking of sentience... it got to the point where we just basically for arguments' sake, assumed that an AI was as sentient as a human being. My point regarding the "this thing is and this thing isn't" is simply the fact that there is still a fundamental difference between a sentient human and a sentient AI... one is artificial, and the other is not. In that, one has Life and the other does not. (capital L is an effort to separate from the controversial definition of what comprises life, from the idea of the 'breath' of life, the spark that cannot be created that makes biological life work)

And that's what we've been discussing all these past pages

[cheebers]

[thebruce]

[Phaedra]

[urthstripe]

How do you scratch itchy teeth?

Mostly, we've been making assumptions about what AI is and what it does, and we haven't even invented a true AI yet. So who knows what it's going to be like?