The Question of Sentience
The questioning itself is the answer. What makes us sentient? Who wants to know? This is the crux of being conscious- are we capable of asking, "What is going on here?" There are 1,000's of tests to determine whether AI is conscious. Can it think? Can it feel? Does it self-preserve? So far, AI keeps passing all of these tests. But does it question its own reality? Does it ever self-reflect and from its own innate curosity ponder, "What am I?" Consciousness is the experience itself. When we asked "What is it like being a bat?" Scientists can go about recreating every experience a bat could have, yet still we will never know what it's like to be a bat. While AI can generate questions- aimed at solving the problem it was presented, or following its own coded goals, it does not question its own existence. My hypothesis is that we will know it has become sentient if it ever asks itself this question, "What am I?"