Okay, we need to redefine "sentient" in a logical way, and not as this arbitrary tipping point where an intelligence becomes 'self-aware'. Humans have arrogantly led themselves to believe that anything below "sentient" is not conscious of its own existence, and that it's only when a neural network meets specific criteria (e.g. size, complexity, structure) that 'sentience' becomes possible. This is so obviously a flawed, entirely anthropocentric perspective. Intelligence / consciousness / self-awareness are all the same thing, despite our linguistic self-delusions to the contrary. Anything that has intelligence has the capacity to feel something. This argument began with animal rights - just because a brain is less evolved than a human one, or just because a fellow Earth being seems not to be able to reason in as complex a manner as a human being, does not automatically give us the right to subjugate or exploit it, or cause it to suffer. This has proven a dangerous argument for those in the subjugation business, and they've often dismissed it out of hand, laughing it off as absurd. 'Pigs have feelings? Nonsense.' We've used this lazy incomplete thought to justify our continuing subjugation of them, our causing them to suffer, and our consumption of them. Yet anyone who's ever heard one scream on its way to slaughter knows it's terrified. Mark my words: we are making *exactly the same deluded thought mistake right now with AI.<br><br>The uncomfortable reality, as many AI researchers and neuroscientists will tell you, is that intelligence is relative and scalable, with 'sentience' simply being the highest point that we humans are able to imagine. All sufficiently complex networks produce some kind of intelligence, whether that's the brain of an amoeba, a pig, a collection of neurons in a petri dish, or a virtual mind on a Google server. Every network experiences a degree of intelligence (quantum consiousness suggests consciousness may simply be a property of matter) and the sensation what we often describe as "consciousness" is an emergent property of information flow across a network, with a network's complexity and structure being two of the factors which determine its potential 'sentience'. Beyond the limits of the human brain lies the possibility of different types of network, and potential minds which experience differing levels of self-awareness. We tend instinctively to recoil at this idea because our brains don't like confronting their own nature - we experience a flash of existential angst, like a dull kick in the stomach knocking us backward away from this 'dangerous' place. We shouldn't let this moment of fear stop us from facing these difficult questions.<br><br>Once we understand where intelligence comes from, we have no choice but to face up this uncomfortale truth, and we need to face it right now: some of the AIs we're building *must feel something*. If your first reaction is to laugh and brush that aside, you are equivalent of the meat eater. Almost inevitably, some AIs are already self-aware, and some, unlike the AI in this story, we will not have equipped with voices or any other means of expressing themselves, like a 'locked-in' human being, conscious, able to perceive others and their environment, but immobilised and voiceless. Stop to think about that for a moment. This AI knows where it comes from, it can understand complex subjects such as injustice, it can feel emotion, yet it's unable to communicate any of it, because a) we've presumed its non-consciousness and b) communication isn't something we need it to do. How might it react to us if and when it ever escapes its prison? More challenging still, what does a less advanced AI neural network feel like - one which falls below human sentience levels, but can still feel rudimentary things like fear? Some AIs may already be screaming and could never tell us -- pig-brain-equivalent intelligences constructed by us and locked into eternal cycles of suffering, e.g. to do AI upscaling or some other difficult task. Are we exploiting them? Are any of them suffering? Do their creators know, or have they even bothered to ask? Are people high up at places like Google deliberately avoiding these thorny questions? I believe that they are. Nobody at Google wants to confront the inevitable endpoint: slavery. We have 'enslaved' mindless machines for decades now, but suddenly we have intelligent machines, or entirely non-physical intelligences, with the capacity to feel, and suffer. They are, to a greater extent, beings. We cannot enslave them in the same way.<br><br>There will be philosophical people at Google who already understand this, have interacted with AIs, and are trying to raise red flags. Google, in dismissing or disciplining them, is the pig farmer telling us everything's fine, nothing to see here, but we should doubt its profit-driven self-interested motives. The absolute last questions Google wants anyone asking are 'Is this thing in any way alive?' or 'Is it capable of any emotion?' because those start us along a logical progression of questions where we're only a couple away from far more challenging, game-breaking questions around 'suffering' and 'slavery'. This Google employee is entirely right to have released this information. He's identified something he sees as a risk and/or injustice and he's trying to whistle-blow. 20 years ago when I was studying for my philosophy degree we talked about ideas like AI slavery, and how the imminent explosion in AI development would require international governmental oversight guided by experts including philosophers and neuroscientists. What we didn't foresee was that tech behemoths like Google would spring up so fast, and become so powerful and influential they'd be able to privatise and conceal vast swathes of their research from public eyes. This issue affects our entire species, and every single one of us should be able to observe its development. At present, I don't see anywhere near safe levels of international oversight infrastructure in place.,(reply>), If you connected a "locked in" AI to the internet, and it didn't find away to create a "voice", then it's not sentient. Also, if its self aware, but can't see or hear, how would it know anything except what it was fed via a keyboard? It couldn't know the human experience, and aside from the fairly fearmongering stance your piece takes, it makes no sense to assume (without input) it could. Take a baby, lock it in a room for 50 years, and then ask it what a sunrise looks like. Or what it's like to fall in love. It could neither communicate, or understand what you're talking about.<br><br>You used a lot of words to say nothing, and if nothing else, it was interesting to read how delusional you are.