Even so, it's so easy to dismiss AI as "insentient" without any proof whatsoever - exactly because the definition of "sentience" is inherently subjective and cannot be measured in any meaningful way.
At some point, after AI becomes capable of passing all Turing tests known to men, people will have to deal with the fact that they don't know what "sentience" is, and I think at that point they will divide in two diametrically opposed clans:
1. those who believe that humans are nothing more than glorified bio-computers, and consider AI sentient
2. those who believe that sentience is human-only and that a machine can't be sentient, no matter how sentient it appears
And both groups will hold on to their views dogmatically, because there is no way to prove/disprove "sentience".
At some point, after AI becomes capable of passing all Turing tests known to men, people will have to deal with the fact that they don't know what "sentience" is, and I think at that point they will divide in two diametrically opposed clans:
1. those who believe that humans are nothing more than glorified bio-computers, and consider AI sentient
2. those who believe that sentience is human-only and that a machine can't be sentient, no matter how sentient it appears
And both groups will hold on to their views dogmatically, because there is no way to prove/disprove "sentience".