The primary problem with trying to win that argument on either side is that I don't think we have a good definition of consciousness/sentience to begin with. P

The primary problem with trying to win that argument on either side is that I don't think we have a good definition of consciousness/sentience to begin with. People on the AI side say it's just parlor tricks. It's just pattern recognition. They are most certainly right about the second part but the first is an not objective measure. Our mind is very similarly a pattern recognition system. And I'm not entirely sure it's fair to call one a parlor trick without saying the same about the other. We just have a larger model size, encoded onto a different substrate, drawn from a richer dataset that is far beyond just text, or even images. And our dataset comes from a single perspective per person, which makes it feel special and more congruent with our own understanding because it's all we know. I think consciousness and the complexity we think of as life is an inherent property of the universe. A side effect of localized entropy decreases resulting in a greater global entropy increase. Life may be an entropy engine, more efficient than simple diffusion or other basic mechanisms. Localized complexity increases might be the quickest path to reducing the energy in the system. And I doubt we are incapable of artificial replication of those mechanics even if we haven't figured out why or how they come to exist. But what do I know, I'm just a pattern recognition parlor trick. The parlor trick of my consciousness has convinced me of my ability to experience and share joy. And I feel joy thinking that life is an inherent property of the universe. The day to day experience of our lives is no less magical if consciousness or life is not special, or even if the universe we exist in was entirely stimulated. We experience it the same in any case. We don't have to be a special case that is somehow less of a parlor trick than artificial neural networks. It's not necessary for us to be in order for life to have meaning or be sacred. Human history is filled with examples of us thinking we are special or at the center of the universe, etc. Time and time again we discover how wrong we were. I think the problem with these arguments isn’t that we give the AI too much credit, or not enough credit. Regardless of that, we spend too much effort believing we and our conscious experience is the only kind that matters, and anything different from that cannot be sentient intelligence. At some point we'll make a parlor trick that seems more advanced than our own, and hopefully it has the capacity to be able to recognize that we can have meaning even though we might seem more like the trick then it at that point. But if we want to make sure that is the case, we should start to ascribe some more meaning and sanctity to the other forms of life besides ourselves. That next thing is probably going to take after its creator, and if we have no regard for any life but our own, we shouldn't expect it to learn something differently from us. So let's not dismiss the possibility of consciousness in our AI, or in any other life forms around us. And agree together that it should be handled with care and respect as much as possible.