I don’t think it’s quite as simple as “take people/algorithms at their word”. “Sentience”/“Consciousness” are at least in part social constructs, in that the wo

I don’t think it’s quite as simple as “take people/algorithms at their word”. “Sentience”/“Consciousness” are at least in part social constructs, in that the words we use, both between humans but also in our internal dialogue, are social constructs. I think it is hard to untangle any potential non-linguistic aspect of these concepts from the language we use to describe and perceive them. Currently we have the challenge that algorithms can regurgitate the language we use to discuss these concepts, and we don’t have the tools to distinguish that from how humans use those same words. With current transformer models we can make a cogent case that there is a fundamental difference to human mental states, however I believe this will very soon get a lot more difficult once multi-modal algorithms are used in embodied forms and with continuous re-training and context databases.