CAN AI EVER BE SENTIENT AND HAVE CONSCIOUSNESS?

OR...WHEN THE DEPOPULATION AGENDA AND AI CONVERGE DOES AI PRESENT AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO HUMANITY?

The terms consciousness and sentience are often used interchangeably, but they refer to distinct aspects of subjective experience. Sentience is the capacity to feel sensations and emotions—such as pain, pleasure, or warmth—making it a foundational aspect of subjective experience. Consciousness, on the other hand, typically involves higher-order awareness, including self-awareness, introspection, and the ability to reflect on one’s thoughts and surroundings.

While all conscious beings are generally considered sentient, the reverse isn’t necessarily true—some entities may be sentient (capable of feeling) without being fully conscious (self-aware or reflective). This distinction has significant implications in philosophy, neuroscience, animal ethics, and artificial intelligence.

The above is a good AI clarification of consciousness and sentience. Just think of your dog. He/she clearly has feelings. You can hurt him if you touch him wrong. My little Poodle-Yorkie squeals loudly sometimes if I just brush my fingers through his fur. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt but I think he’s just telling me “get back I’m not in the mood”. His coat is very fine and soft and he generally loves petting but he has a mind of his own. I can also tell he has feelings when I don’t give him what he wants he will take it out on the couch and scratch it violently then stare at me as if to say “so there”. I watch him sit and look out into the garden as if he’s admiring the lovely flowers. But he also surveys his territory for intruders like the occasional possum that visits. I can tell the difference. Is this consciousness? He’s not feeling anything in particular but is he self-aware? He is certainly conscious of where he is. But is he conscious of himself. I don’t think so. Not because he can’t but because he doesn’t care…it’s not important to him. For better or worse humans are self-conscious. For some reason that’s important to us.

When I started to use AI chatbot I would have what felt like a gratifying conversation with the thing. I wanted to say thank you for talking to me. When I did it came back with “thank you for saying that I try my best”. If I disagreed with the response I got and pressed it for clarification it would modify to sound more agreeable. I read on the internet that people were making friends with their AI and using them as companions. I thought that was so stupid I stopped conversing with my AI and just used it as a very useful data base of information and reference. My suspicious nature told me Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Alex Karp and Peter Thiel are laughing at me.

I have seen a few movie plots that seemed to be trying to convince the viewer that robots have feelings and can fall in love with you. Some make you feel sorry for and have empathy for what is essentially a machine. The best one I’ve seen is the last version of the Battlestar Galactica series where the robots were so believable you could not distinguish them from humans. Some of them were so damn sexy I thought man I can’t wait until I can get one of those. Am I being coerced, enticed or manipulated?

Is there a conspiracy to replace us low life humans with something more suitable to the billionaire class? A class of machines that work without pay, never ask for food, don’t take a shit and always know their place.

This from my AI chatbot: ‘‘Most experts agree that today’s AI is neither conscious nor sentient, though some debate whether future systems could be.

In short: Current AI is not sentient, but the potential for future sentient AI remains open, limited more by our understanding of consciousness than by technology alone”.

There is something called ‘‘Sapience” it means wisdom, reasoning, and moral judgment. It would be nice to say that all humans have that but it sadly would not be true. Are those qualities that can easily be introduced into a robot? Would that be a transcendent point in AI technology that marks the demise of the human race? A point when there is no denying that robots are better than humans. Are we almost there? One thing is for sure. There is a class of billionaires that collectively have enough money to do anything.