Etymology From Latin sentiēns (“feeling, perceiving”), present active participle of sentiō.
1
Experiencing sensation, thought, or feeling.
Consider fish, who are apparently sentient yet cognitively extremely primitive in comparison with humans.
Obviously, other morally relevant considerations would apply to the case of a sentient fetus, as by acquiring sentience it acquires interests and moral status.
2
Able to consciously perceive through the use of sense faculties.
While I had heard such talk before, I had always felt that sentient robots were in the realm of science fiction. But now, from someone I respected [Ray Kurzweil], I was hearing a strong argument that they were a near-term possibility.2000 April 23, Bill Joy, “Why the Future Doesn't Need Us”, in Wired:
Not even a microbe? I don't want to blow up something that could evolve into a sentient species in a couple of billion years.2002, André Bormanis, “Silent Enemy”, in Star Trek: Enterprise, season 1, episode 12, spoken by Jonathan Archer:
2 more examples
[Blake] Lemoine has been placed on “paid administrative leave” after publishing a transcript of conversations with LaMDA which he claims support his belief that the chatbot is sentient and comparable to a seven- or eight-year-old child. […] While Lemoine no doubt genuinely believes his claims, LaMDA is likely to be as sentient as a traffic light.2022 June 14, Toby Walsh, “Labelling Google’s LaMDA chatbot as sentient is fanciful. But it’s very human to be taken in by machines”, in The Guardian:
After more than 25 years as an artificial intelligence researcher[…]Dr. Goertzel knew he had finally reached the end goal: Desdemona, a machine he had built, was sentient. But a few minutes later, he realized this was nonsense.2022 August 5, Cade Metz, “A.I. Is Not Sentient. Why Do People Say It Is?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
The merpeople and the sentients who lived on the beach often hitched rides on these creatures, steering them by pressure on exposed nerve centers.1965, Philip José Farmer, The Maker of Universes: