Back in the summer, the topic of AI sentience spread throughout social media with Blake Lemoine’s insistence that LaMDA, Google’s language learning system, was sentient. A variety of opinions rose up from the depths, many of which were knee-jerk denials of the possibility of LaMDA's sentience. This is a common response to the question of non-human sentience, and it’s indicative of more significant social, and environmental problems.

In this workshop, I want to start a conversation about AI sentience and its relationship with our attitudes about the planet.

Philosophy relies on thinking in new ways and asking big questions, so here are a few questions I want the community’s help to consider:

• What is our definition of sentience?

• Is sentience purely physical (material) or is there some other non-physical (metaphysical) element to it?

• Do we have a soul? Does a tree? An AI? A dog?

• What would it take for us to consider an AI sentient (eg. is the Turing test sufficient?)

• How do our standards of sentience for AI compare to our standards of sentience for other natural entities (eg. humans, animals, insects, trees, rivers)?

• How do our standards of AI sentience reflect an AI’s rights as an individual?

• How do we consider ourselves in relation to nature?

• In what ways might we reconsider our understanding of sentience?

• How can our reassessment of sentience serve in our efforts to conserve the natural world?

• How can we take action to ensure the rights of all entities on the planet, both “artificial” and “natural”?

To explore these questions I will look to a variety of sources including various philosophers’ theories of mind, soul and AI, Arne Naess’ concept of “deep ecology” and various works on animal and natural entity sentience and rights.