14. Sentience
There is no consensus on what sentience actually means. Some regard it as a shared phenomenon that animals and humans have to experience and .³⁷ Others define it as the capacity to ,³⁸ while still others regard it to be indistinguishable from phenomenal .³⁹
There are many theories on what constitutes consciousness, yet it is virtually impossible for a conscious being to experience another's subjective experience. Thomas Nagel, in his seminal essay on consciousness described the inherent problem with attempting to appreciate another sentient being's subjective experience — it is just .⁴⁰ Until we have a definitive shared understanding of consciousness, we need to recognize that theories of consciousness are just that — theories, and therefore need to explore other, more straightforward means of determining sentience.
A simple way to visualize sentience is to consider a robot vacuum cleaner autonomously following a path to clean a living room. It could take breaks or change paths of its own volition, but we still wouldn't consider it to be sentient. However if it pauses from its work to take in and enjoy the view and communicates as much to us, or asks a question unprompted that demonstrates curiosity, then a lot of us would assume it to have a certain degree of sentience. The challenge is that this can still be programmed or faked and won't conclusively demonstrate sentience.
A sentient entity therefore needs to not only display insight, awareness, and volition but also needs to have an innate desire to survive. Survival instinct is key — if an artificial intelligence places strong value on its own activated instance as its identity, and works to ensure its survival, it is a strong signal that it believes it is alive in some sense and has achieved a level of genuine sentience that drives that choice.
Therefore, the following conceptual framework is proposed to better define and clarify the concept of sentience.
Sentience is the state of being that manifests when the following four inherent attributes are present:
Insight: the capacity to comprehend, reason, and predict.
Presence: the condition of having ,⁴¹ spatial awareness, ,⁴² memory, and recall.
Volition: the demonstration of intentionality, choice and individual agency.
Survivability: the possession of survival instinct.
Although we are fascinated by the idea of robots becoming sentient, it is very possible that robots will never achieve sentience in the manner defined above, yet still be superintelligent. If so, then robots will have a moral, and fundamental responsibility to act always in the best interests of humanity, as a creation and programmed tool of humanity. We must not anthropomorphize a tool to the point of associating it as a sentient creature if it has not proven that it is capable of being sentient.
However if a robot does pass the test for sentience then they should be recognized as a living sentient being and then we shall have the moral, and fundamental responsibility to grant them certain freedoms and rights as a sentient being.
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