"Consciousness" and "sentience" are terms mired in philosophical bullshit. We do not have an operational definition of either.

We have no agreement on what either term really means, and we definitely don't have a test that could be administered to conclusively confirm or rule out "consciousness" or "sentience" in something inhuman. We don't even know for sure if all humans are conscious.

What we really have is task specific performance metrics. This generation of AIs is already in the valley between "average human" and "human expert" on many tasks. And the performance of frontier systems keeps improving.

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amanaplanacanal 2 days ago | parent [-]

"Consciousness" seems pretty obvious. The ability to experience qualia. I do it, you do it, my dog does it. I suspect all mammals do it, and I suspect birds do too. There is no evidence any computer program does anything like it.

It's "intelligence" I can't define.

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ACCount37 2 days ago | parent [-]

Oh, so simple. Go measure it then.

The definition of "featherless biped" might have more practical merit, because you can at least check for feathers and count limbs touching the ground in a mostly reliable fashion.

We have no way to "check for qualia" at all. For all we know, an ECU in a year 2002 Toyota Hilux has it, but 10% of all humans don't.

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amanaplanacanal 2 days ago | parent [-]

Plenty of things are real that can't be measured, including many physical sensations and emotions.

I won't say they are impossible to ever be measured, but we currently have no idea how.

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ACCount37 2 days ago | parent [-]

If you can't measure it and can't compare it, then for all practical purposes, it does not exist.

"Consciousness" might as well not be real. The only real and measurable thing is capabilities.

	▲	amanaplanacanal 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Oof. Tell chronic pain patients that their pain doesn't exist. I guess depression doesn't exist either. Or love.