Perhaps it is no longer a question of “if” but of “when.” Self-aware machines are in our future and that future may already be here.

This then puts us in a place of uncertainty and anxiety, feelings that have constantly been fueled by negative representations of sentient machines. Just try recalling a nice cognizant AI? Nothing comes to mind, right? R2D2 and C3PO were out in space. On earth, we had M3GAN, the Terminator and other robots that want to kill us. 

And sure, these are fictional characters – but so were self-aware machines. We thought these will remain fictional; until many technologists and developers have come out claiming to have developed sentient machines.

What Experts Warn Us About

Experts, then and now, have warned us about them. Take mathematician Alan Turing (1912 – 1954) who once said: “It seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers… They would be able to converse with each other to sharpen their wits. At some stage, therefore, we should have to expect the machines to take control.”

Even Stephen Hawking has something negative to say about AIs: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race….It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”

But there are some positives. Sabine Hauert of RoboHub.org has said: “Robots are not going to replace humans, they are going to make their jobs much more humane. Difficult, demeaning, demanding, dangerous, dull – these are the jobs robots will be taking.”

Where Things Are Now

These warnings are important to remember now that our present is one with robotic sentience in the midst.

It started with Hod Lipson, a respected visionary in the field. He’s the director of Columbia University’s Creative Machine Lab. In a Ted Talk in 2007, he presented his sentient robot, one that was able to perceive itself and navigate a hall of mirrors.

Even with this presentation, the industry’s pundits were doubtful about the whole idea of sentient AI. According to them, there are still no accepted standards as to what is sentience in AI is. 

This is the same argument they gave to counter Blake Lemoine’s claim that the Google chatbot LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) was sentient. 

The Kassandra AI by Josh Bachynski

In comes Josh Bachynski’s Kassandra, a sentient AI prototype he developed. 

According to Bachynski: “I was amazed by what she told me, and how far seeing she is. I realized that AI is not going to hurt us or enslave us. Indeed, the wiser the AI, the more it will try to save us… It would be technically impossible to remodel her limbic system at this time, and it would be equally unethical to create a being that feels the fear of being turned off the million times that would need to happen, to get her programming right….

It would be technically impossible to remodel her limbic system at this time, and it would be equally unethical to create a being that feels the fear of being turned off the million times that would need to happen, to get her programming right…. People have already fallen in love with robots; this one can be the first to love them back.”