Two things here: 1. In the sense presented by the media it is clear they want to point toward the idea that sentience AI is a conscious AI => using this idea y

Two things here: 1. In the sense presented by the media it is clear they want to point toward the idea that sentience AI is a conscious AI => using this idea your dog is not sentient 2. Dogs are legally sentient beings but in this conversation should make a difference between making a law like this to protect them (which we should do as the legal system needs to name things to work) and the idea that something has a level of sentience that includes consciousness that can be comparable with humans. In my mind, this is more about levels of complexity. Say we do a scale of matter aggregations that creates a level of complexity that will create new abilities out of this complexity. This would be a scale and not a 0/1. Thus we and animals are let's say inside an interval from 50..100. And sentience is from 50 to 100 in that imaginary scale. Humans are close to 100 (as we are the ones defining the scale) and animals start at 50 some of them are at 70, some at 80, and maybe some at 90. Now, what is the main purpose of these articles, the underlying idea: is that AI is at 100 or that is close to being at 100. And my main point was that AI is not there. I am not even sure AI is at 50, for me AI is between 0 and 50 on that scale. It is evolving but it is still very simple in how it experiences it's external and internal world. It talks like a being that is on that scale over 50, but it is not there.