How to Use sentience in a Sentence

sentience

noun
Definition of sentiencenext
  • The sentience bill has had its second reading in the House of Lords.
    — Washington Post, 4 July 2021
  • But Google is not the only one that pushed back on Lemoine's tale of sentience.
    — Jeremy Kahn, Fortune, 13 June 2022
  • And the kid, who clearly hasn't reached sentience yet, doesn't know that Maeve used to fill that role.
    — refinery29.com, 28 May 2018
  • Blake Lemoine maintains that the bot has achieved sentience.
    — Longreads, 29 Dec. 2022
  • There is a lot of angst about the meaning of sentience and the meaning of consciousness.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 21 June 2022
  • Buckle up for a quick and dirty history of the ethics of sentience.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 28 Oct. 2020
  • On the sentience front, this still qualified as a ways off.
    — Nathan Mattise, Ars Technica, 7 Dec. 2017
  • This is sure proof that AI is sentient or on the verge of sentience, some proclaimed.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 29 Dec. 2022
  • Realize that this is not a result of any sentience by the AI.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 22 Mar. 2023
  • Some get confused by the powers of these models and make claims such as sentience.
    — Arun Shastri, Forbes, 26 June 2022
  • Unless the Abbatars gain sentience, then all bets are off.
    — Bethy Squires, Vulture, 27 Oct. 2021
  • And some people even think that an AI has attained sentience.
    — Sean Gallagher, Ars Technica, 1 Aug. 2022
  • Do the cats gain some higher sentience that allows them to walk upright, freed from the chains of walking on all fours?
    — Sonia Rao, Washington Post, 19 Dec. 2019
  • Please do not allow yourself to be taken in by the aura of sentience.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 11 Feb. 2024
  • The answer is that the man is a sideshow, a creature, a living, breathing waste-dump of sports-takes thinking that gained sentience.
    — Corbin Smith, Rolling Stone, 7 Jan. 2023
  • From where does our robust self-awareness and sentience arise?
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 27 Oct. 2020
  • Why has such sentience been attributed to the groundhog?
    — Michael S. Rosenwald, Washington Post, 2 Feb. 2018
  • This new research, though, is more focused on the exhibition of sentience seen in brain cells in a dish.
    — Joshua Hawkins, BGR, 18 Oct. 2022
  • There are many membership levels in the sentience club.
    — Avery Hurt, Discover Magazine, 3 Feb. 2023
  • On HBO’s Westworld, female androids gain sentience and aim their guns at the humans who abused them.
    — Eliana Dockterman, Time, 31 May 2018
  • The machines then gained sentience and destroyed every living thing in their wake.
    — Bob Vulfov, The New Yorker, 5 Nov. 2019
  • She is obsessed with her dog, advice columns, and plant sentience.
    — Quartz Staff, Quartz, 8 Nov. 2021
  • All his flannels gained sentience and hacked into my laptop to blackmail me.
    — Ashley Bardhan, Vulture, 26 Nov. 2021
  • But wait for a second, remember that the AI of today does not have sentience and does not have legal personhood.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 13 Mar. 2022
  • This summer, Google fired one of its engineers who had become convinced that one of its chatbots had reached sentience.
    — Time, 5 Dec. 2022
  • Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom believes AI has already started to show small amounts of sentience.
    — Tim Newcomb, Popular Mechanics, 18 Apr. 2023
  • All that’s left are robots, which have sentience and act almost like people, and cute but voracious creatures called Zurks.
    — Gieson Cacho, Dallas News, 18 Aug. 2022
  • Nonetheless, the episode does raise thorny questions about what would qualify as sentience.
    — Reuters, NBC News, 30 June 2022
  • All in all, the crucial takeaway is to not associate today’s generative AI with sentience.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 29 Feb. 2024
  • My view is that sentience, or the ability to suffer, would be a sufficient condition, but not a necessary condition, for an AI system to have moral status.
    — Will Knight, WIRED, 2 May 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sentience.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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