sentience
In plain wordsThe ability to have feelings that are good or bad for you, such as pleasure, pain, comfort or distress. It is the most common test for whether a being's welfare matters morally.
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Philosophy and ethics
The capacity for experiences that feel good or bad to the one having them — pleasure and pain, comfort and distress, satisfaction and frustration — which philosophers call valenced experiences. Sentience is narrower than consciousnessconsciousness, n.: Having experiences: there being something it feels like to be you, as when you see red or feel pain. Whether any AI is or could become conscious is an open and fiercely debated question., since a being could in principle have experiences with no positive or negative character, and broader than humanlike emotion. In ethics it is the most widely accepted basis for moral patienthoodmoral patienthood, n.: Being the kind of being whose interests matter morally for its own sake, so that it can be wronged. Babies and animals count, even though they are not responsible for what they do.: on utilitarian and many other views, a being's interests count if it can suffer or fare well. Evidence for sentience in animals comes from behavior and neurobiology, such as wound-tending, responses to pain relief and trade-offs between harm and reward. Applying such markers to AI is difficult because a language model can reproduce the verbal and behavioral signs of feeling from its training data whether or not any feeling lies behind them.
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Popular usageinformal
Loosely, any mindlike quality — consciousness, self-awareness, understanding or human-level intelligence — attributed to a machine, as in headlines about 'sentient AI'. This usage blurs distinctions that the philosophical sense keeps apart.
The engineer's claim that the chatbot was sentient was rejected by his employer and most researchers.
Origin
From Latin sentire, 'to feel'; 'sentient' is attested in English from the 17th century. Jeremy Bentham's 1789 footnote asking of animals not whether they can reason or talk but whether they can suffer made the capacity central to ethics, and Peter Singer's Animal Liberation (1975) popularized it. It reached AI headlines with the 2022 LaMDA sentience controversyLaMDA sentience controversy, n.: A 2022 episode in which a Google engineer claimed the company's chatbot LaMDA had become conscious and deserved rights. Google rejected the claim and later fired him for breaking its confidentiality rules, and the case set off worldwide debate..
Usage note
Laws recognize sentience in animals, among them Article 13 of the EU's Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (in force since 2009) and the UK's Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022; no law recognizes it in AI systems. Intelligence and sentience can come apart in both directions.
Related
- consciousnessconsciousness, n.: Having experiences: there being something it feels like to be you, as when you see red or feel pain. Whether any AI is or could become conscious is an open and fiercely debated question.
- moral patienthoodmoral patienthood, n.: Being the kind of being whose interests matter morally for its own sake, so that it can be wronged. Babies and animals count, even though they are not responsible for what they do.
- AI welfareAI welfare, n.: Concern for the well-being of AI systems themselves, in case some of them can suffer or have interests that matter — and the research into how to tell and what to do about it.
- phenomenal consciousnessphenomenal consciousness, n.: The felt, experiential side of the mind — what it is like to taste coffee or to feel sad — as opposed to simply processing or reporting information.
- LaMDA sentience controversyLaMDA sentience controversy, n.: A 2022 episode in which a Google engineer claimed the company's chatbot LaMDA had become conscious and deserved rights. Google rejected the claim and later fired him for breaking its confidentiality rules, and the case set off worldwide debate.
- qualiaqualia, n.: The individual felt qualities of experience — the particular redness of red, the taste of mint, the sting of a burn — that seem impossible to capture fully in words.
- intelligenceintelligence, n.: The ability to learn, understand, reason and solve problems — especially new ones — in order to reach goals. Experts disagree about how to define it precisely, for people and even more for machines.
Sources
- Bentham, J. (1789). An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. 17, note.
- Birch, J. (2024). The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI. Oxford University Press.
Mentioned in
AI welfareAI welfare, n.: Concern for the well-being of AI systems themselves, in case some of them can suffer or have interests that matter — and the research into how to tell and what to do about it., consciousnessconsciousness, n.: Having experiences: there being something it feels like to be you, as when you see red or feel pain. Whether any AI is or could become conscious is an open and fiercely debated question., intelligenceintelligence, n.: The ability to learn, understand, reason and solve problems — especially new ones — in order to reach goals. Experts disagree about how to define it precisely, for people and even more for machines., AI personhoodAI personhood, n.: The idea of treating an AI system as a 'person' in law or ethics, with rights or duties of its own — for example, to own property, to be sued, or not to be deleted., moral patienthoodmoral patienthood, n.: Being the kind of being whose interests matter morally for its own sake, so that it can be wronged. Babies and animals count, even though they are not responsible for what they do., phenomenal consciousnessphenomenal consciousness, n.: The felt, experiential side of the mind — what it is like to taste coffee or to feel sad — as opposed to simply processing or reporting information., LaMDA sentience controversyLaMDA sentience controversy, n.: A 2022 episode in which a Google engineer claimed the company's chatbot LaMDA had become conscious and deserved rights. Google rejected the claim and later fired him for breaking its confidentiality rules, and the case set off worldwide debate.