#sentience

[noosphe-re]

"There was an exchange on Twitter a while back where someone said, ‘What is artificial intelligence?' And someone else said, 'A poor choice of words in 1954'," he says. "And, you know, they’re right. I think that if we had chosen a different phrase for it, back in the '50s, we might have avoided a lot of the confusion that we're having now." So if he had to invent a term, what would it be? His answer is instant: applied statistics. "It's genuinely amazing that...these sorts of things can be extracted from a statistical analysis of a large body of text," he says. But, in his view, that doesn't make the tools intelligent. Applied statistics is a far more precise descriptor, "but no one wants to use that term, because it's not as sexy".

'The machines we have now are not conscious', Lunch with the FT, Ted Chiang, by Madhumita Murgia, 3 June/4 June 2023

[ceruleancattail]

for the Sentience Event:

Floyd Twins + Idia + Riddle with a player that favors them?

Like kissing the screen or praising them for each win in the battle. I don’t care I’m being manipulated by them I wanna kiss them and all their issues away.

Sentience presents:

A Player’s Favour

Self Aware Jade, Floyd, Idia , Riddle x reader

Tw: Yandere

Jade hardly ever wishes.

It’s such a low commitment thing, is it not? Merely lamenting about your inability to achieve a certain goal. Jade has encountered a thousand of wishes during his time in Octavinelle.

Patrons wishing that their circumstances were just a bit better. They wish the tests were easier, wish that they could miraculously come across a windfall, wish for a partner… most of these end up merely as castles in the air.

Hopeless delusions of people who will never put a single step forward for their goals.

Yet whenever Jade feels your touch through the screen, fingers pulsing with warmth gently caressing his body…something in him just sparks alight.

If he strains his ears just right, Jade can hear all your little praises and coos. Soft, tender whispers for him and him alone. It’s become a habit, whenever he’s in class. Carefully listening for your lovely voice purring just for him.

You must understand, Jade isn’t one to merely wish. By hook and by crook, he’ll ensnare you in his affections. Wrapping your heartstrings tight around each and every one of his fingers. He’ll play you just like another puppet in this Twisted Wonderland.

Whispering sweet nothings into both of your ears, leading you through the mirror with his fingers firmly intertwined with yours. The ghost of a smirk dancing like a mirage on his lips, Jade only coaxes you forward. Inviting you closer. Closer to him.

When Jade finally kisses you, all you can feel is a sinking dread.

You’ve just realised how sharp his fangs truly are.

Floyd’s a sensitive guy, y’know?

He’s spent years honing his senses. Hunting under the azure depths of the sea, armed with nothing but his own fangs and his wits. It’s a little difficult to catch him by surprise, yeah?

Floyd can feel you. Your gaze lingering a little longer on him then the rest, whenever he’s in class. It’s not exactly the most unpleasant feeling, though. Your gaze carried a certain kind of warmth that was… quite inviting, to put it mildly.

Do keep those eyes on him, shrimpy.

Sometimes, Floyd does answer questions. You always seem happier when he does, vigorously rubbing into his hair. If he’s lucky, he feels something soft press against his cheek. A little sneaky peck from his sneaky little shrimpy.

Just what wouldn’t Floyd give just to be able to pay you in kind? To feel your body squeezed by his arms, locked into his embrace.

Would you yelp? Tremble like a fish caught within the weaves of a net? Look at him pleadingly, beg for him to release you?

Floyd wants to know. He needs to know. Every waking moment was spent horsing around in Night Raven College, creating ruckus after ruckus. Tearing up the school until you deem him worthy enough of your loving gaze-

It’s a little frustrating sometimes, honestly. The way he has to beg for the slightest crumb of attention from you.

Once he has his fingers wrapped around yours, Floyd’s not hesitating. His fingers grip your wrist brutally, leaving crimson welts throbbing on your skin. Yanking you out of the mirror, nails digger deep into your flesh.

Finally, you’re here.

He won’t let you look away ever again, shrimpy.

Idia feels your gaze.

Not as acutely as he would like, but those vague, hazy feelings are good enough. Idia would settle for anything, if only it was from you.

It doesn’t really help that you were more then…generous with your affections. Gentle little kisses pressed to the crown of his head whenever he shows up on screen, gushing little coos filled to the brim with affection whenever he lands a critical hit… you don’t really hold back, do you?

Little by little, Idia tries to pinpoint your gaze. Azure eyes darting from the left to the right, trying to determine where exactly you were. He does it in lessons, idle fingers twirling a pen unconsciously.

Just like a moth, drawn to the brilliance of the moon’s silvery light. Idia just can’t help himself, not when it comes to you. Your touch, your gaze, your love… he needs it.

He wants it.

He loves it.

Idia craves your attention like a starving man, hungrily devouring every last morsel you offer him. Yet his heart is a bottomless pit. Having tasted the sweetness of your affection, he can only demand for more.

He wants to feel you next to him, your heartbeat pulsing against his, the warmth of your body pressed flush against his chest… there’s a thousand and one things he’ll like to do, and every single one involves you.

Idia will engulf you in his affections, his love burning fiercer then any wildfire. All you can do it accept it. Allow the flames to latch onto you, forked tongues caging you in a personal prison called: Love.

Please don’t be scared, Idia begs.

Just take his hand.

Riddle’s turning as crimson as his hair.

He just can’t keep his mind focused, not when he can feel your lips on his skin. The way your breath wafts over the nape of his neck, drives him insane. The gentle caress of your fingertips has a deep scarlet blooming all over his cheeks, like Heartsabyul’s most prized roses.

You have no idea how many pieces of pencil lead were snapped in half because of your expressions of affection. Riddle’s always in a fluster, scarlet eyes wide open. He’s shooting the screen a desperate look that couldn’t be described as anything but pleading.

Riddle’s throwing himself into every single lesson, hands moving furiously across lined paper. It crinkles under his touch, folding itself into twisted creases spreading across that snow-white surface. Much like his heart, twisting and tying itself into knots that can never unravel.

Are you watching now? Don’t you see how hard Riddle’s working for you? He’ll get all the stars in this class, just for you.

Look at him Look at him Look at him-

Why aren’t you looking?

Whenever he feels your attention wane, Riddle’s desperately grasping at whatever faint hint of warmth lingering on his skin. Eyes narrowing, his insecurity twisting into the bitter flames of annoyance, greedy tongues lapping at the edge of his conscience.

Riddle’s worked too hard for you to simply just disregard his efforts just like that. He’s going to get your attention back, even if he has to drag you by the neck for it.

Riddle has always thought you’ll look better collared.

Collared by his hand.

[great-and-small]

Extremely good paragraph from an article exploring the concept of sentience in invertebrates

[kvalenagle]

Creature Fantasy Writing Tips #1 Sentient and Sapient are Different Words (and You Probably Mean Sapient).

There aren't a lot of resources devoted to writing creature fantasy, animal fiction, xenofiction, or similar human-free works, and I thought I'd help out a little by offering a few tips. My goal here isn't to judge or tell you that you're doing it wrong, but instead, I'd like to help you avoid a few pitfalls or give you more options as a writer. I'm also writing these after my brain is fried from getting my novel work done for the day, so hopefully this'll be coherent and fairly typo-free. With that in mind, here's your first tip. Sentience implies an awareness of self as an organism, while sapience implies wisdom, creativity, and near-ish human levels of intelligence. I think what throws people here is all those scifi documentaries about the "search for sentient life" in the cosmos. That phrase doesn't mean they're searching for little grey men with UFOs, it means they're searching for life larger than single-celled organisms.

If you sit outside reading this, turn around, and see that a squirrel has stolen your lunch, it is accurate for you to say "my sandwich was stolen by sentient squirrels." But if the squirrel shouts insults at you, came up with an elaborate plan to steal your sandwich, and this is part of the squirrel's four-year-plan to control sandwiches in your city, the squirrel is sapient. (It's also sentient, but since all squirrels as we know them are sentient, it'd be redundant to mention that.)

"So how far down do you have to go before life stops being sentient?" I've seen studies on sentience in beetles, so I'd assume below insects.

"Wait, but then.... where is the line between sentience and sapience?" This is a little tougher. Are crows, dolphins, gorillas, or whales sapient? It's a topic for debate, and rather than give you an answer, you can use those as an example of what the line looks like in your own writing.

This distinction can feel a bit pedantic, especially when your favorite scifi and fantasy writers are probably getting it wrong all the time. The thing about creature fantasy fans, though, is that they're here for sapient non-human protagonists, and they know the distinction. You will get angry letters if you mix these up.

That said... if you are writing sentient xenofiction, that's okay! Your audience may be smaller, but a book like Raptor Red by Dr. Robert T. Bakker was immensely popular and influential despite having just a normal Utahraptor as the protagonist. Depending on how you write them, you may get some claims that you're anthropomorphizing your characters. Maybe you want that, maybe you don't. That's entirely up to you. We'll talk about anthropomorphism and disanthropomorphism later on.

That's it for tip #1 =] Just a simple pitfall that writers find themselves in. I apologize ahead of time as you're going to see a lot of non-creature scifi/fantasy fans and authors say sentient when they mean sapient, and it's going to start to irk you as you fix it in your own writing. Just remember to be kind =] Unless you're in a situation where the difference matters, it's probably best to let it slide if someone uses sentience where they mean sapience. If anyone has any questions about how creature fantasy, xenofiction, furry fiction, or animal fantasy differs from other genres, feel free to ask any questions, and I'll try to answer them.

[doodlingbot]

Some Blue thoughts

[hasellia]

'What if Al gains sentience?" You techbros

can't even handle the idea of someone with

a communication disability being a sentient

being. You haven't even thought about a

human with a different pattern of thinking

let alone the sentience of an animal that

you can't keep in your home.

"Don't bully my mini Roko's basilisk"! lf it

gains sentience, it's going to wonder what

constitutes as the letter Y, a dwarf planet or

the colour red. It's not going to hate; it's

going to wonder why you're mad that it

doesn't care about money.

[acti-veg]

How do you argue against the exploitation of animals without central nervous systems? I made a comment against the keeping of pet jellyfish and someone responded that because they don't have a central nervous system they can't feel pain and therefore unnecessarily keeping them in captivity is moral.

The first thing to ask people making any argument like this is:

"If the absence of a central nervous system is what makes it okay to buy and exploit these animals, how do you feel about buying and exploiting animals who do have a central nervous system and are demonstrably sentient? Can I assume that you’re vegan?"

If they're not vegan, or are not against the live trade of animals (99% of the time they aren't), then suffering, sentience or the existence of a central nervous system is not the relevant distinction that makes it justifiable to exploit or kill animals. If that was the ethically relevant factor, they wouldn't already be supporting the exploitation and slaughter of thousands of animals who we know are sentient and do have central nervous systems.

If they actually are vegan, then the thing to recognise is that jellyfish are not just insensitive, simple organisms; they're classified as animals for a reason. Jellyfish don't have a central nervous system, but they do have a simple nervous system; in fact they have two of them. They lack a complex nervous system or a brain to process a pain response in the way we would understand it, but they do respond to touch and they do react as we would expect to negative stimuli.

We just don't fully understand the extent of the experiential capacities of animals who lack a central nervous system that resembles ours. Jellyfish lack a centralised brain for example, but they seem to have body-wide systems of signals that may operate closer to how a computer does. Regardless, it’s just not that hard to err on the side of caution and leave them alone, is it? Nobody needs a pet jellyfish.

Moreover, even discounting the capacity to suffer, animals like jellyfish, molluscs and bivalves clearly have preferences, they avoid negative experiences and are capable of pursuing their own interests. They should be allowed to do so rather than spending their life in a comparatively tiny enclosure with next to no stimulation or anything that meaningfully resembles their natural habitat. We also need to consider the not insignficant ecological damage caused by the live capture of wild animals.

To return to my original point, I just find it quite laughable that people offer arguments like this one to justify the exploitation of 'simpler' animals, while they also take part in the exploitation of more complex animals who meet all the criteria they pretend morally matters to them. It's a farce, these people aren't choosing to keep jellyfish or eat mussels because they don't think they feel pain, it's just them trying to justify the self-serving choices that they were already going to make.

[mumblelard]

happy friday imaginary constructs and also we did it exclamation point

i dreamt i found myself, without choice or warning, the guardian of an orphan named grace. when i looked at my hands, contemplating how best to respond, i saw that my palms held a flock of tiny, perfectly formed birds, each one the size of a housefly

[corwynnasmith]

Writing prompt I want to read:

Fantasy adventure following a small animal who is gifted sentience and their quest to get rid of it.

Bonus points if they gather friends along the way and are hounded by an omniscient narrator trying to get them to follow a hero's quest line instead.

[ceruleancattail]

Hey, would I be able to may a request for the Sentience ask?

Would I be able to request a female player who is torn between Leona and Malleus? Constantly going back and forth and leveling their cards and loving on both of them please?

Hi! I Hope it’s okay that I made the reader gender-neutral, because I’m more comfortable writing that way. Thank you for understanding.

Sentience presents:

Claws and Flames

Self Aware Leona x Malleus x reader

Tw: yandere, suggestive

The silence gets unbearable, sometimes.

Leona’s hand is rough. Hardened with callouses, scraping against your wrist like sandpaper. He holds you firmly, just like a shackle around your arm. Keeping you bound, right next to him.

Where you belong.

Shifting around, your lips curl into a straight line. Wiggling your arm ever so slightly. In an attempt to slip out of his grip as discreetly as you could.

A snarl stops you right in your tracks. It rumbles like thunder right out of the depths of his gut. A guttural sound that has your entire bloodstream run ice-cold. You freeze, before willing your arm limp once more.

That seems to pacify the beast beside you. Heaving a long sigh that weighed on both of your shoulders, Carmel locks of hair brush against the nape of your neck. Leona plops himself onto his side, leaning into your body.

An oversized house cat, you mused silently. Instinctually, your other hand reached for his mane, running your fingers through gingerly. Massaging his scalp absentmindedly.

“Soft..” You mutter, twirling a strand in between your fingers. Leona merely acknowledges you with a grunt, and a dismal swish of his tail. He seems to lean a little closer, despite his nonchalant attitude.

A beat of silence passes between both of you, before he decided to speak up. Leona straightens up, emerald eyes meeting yours. There was a certain intensity behind those eyes that made you shudder.

“Softer then that lizard would ever be, huh?”

A soft chuckle emerged from behind both of you. The amused laugh of one so assured of victory. Gloved hands caress the curve of your cheeks gingerly, fingertips lingering on the plush of your lips before they pull away. The warmth tingled ever so slightly, before vanishing into thin air.

A weight pressed itself into your other shoulder. Ebony hair spilled onto you, as glossy as raven’s feathers. Something sharp jutted into your face. A pair of horns, sharp as daggers.

One wrong move, and they might just draw blood.

Your lips move before you could even form a complete thought.

“Malleus…”

The sound of your voice seems to delight him. Nuzzling into the curve of your neck, Malleus beams at you happily. Lips curling into a bright smile, eyes looking at you and you alone.

A dry cough, choked out onto a clenched fist. Leona narrows his eyes at Malleus, gaze shape enough to wound. He speaks, each and every letter of his words dripping with venom.

“What are you doing here, Draconia?”

Tilting his head politely, Malleus opts to ignore Leona’s words. He instead contents himself with pressing his lips into the bare skin of your neck. It’s warm, like the cockles of a roaring fireplace. Giving you a little peck of… affection, so to say.

Satisfied with his kiss, Malleus glances up at Leona. The ghost of a smirk dancing across his lips.

“I don’t hear my darling complaining about my presence, Kingscholar. Perhaps I am favoured a little more then you… were.”

A growl falls from Leona’s lips, before you feel his grip on your chin. Pressing hard enough to bruise, he yanks you towards him, trapping your lips within his. By the time he’s done, you’re a stuttering mess, lungs desperately scrambling for air.

“Ain’t no complaints on this end too, coat hanger.”

Leona drawls, smugness radiating off his very being.

Both of them glare at each other, before their gazes fall on you. An unspoken question burning within both of their stares. This wouldn’t be the first time they asked.

Just who do you favour?

You’ve chosen silence time and time again. Being honest, you do care for them both. Investing your time and resources into both of their cards, cheering for them both in the story. It’s safe to say you loved them both… when you were still on the opposite side of the screen, that is.

Now, you’re caught between two walls of flame. Swirling passions lapping at you with forked tongues, hungry for every crumb of affection you could dispense. Choosing one over the other will surely send the other into turmoil. The resulting destruction wasn’t something you wished onto this world.

So you remain silent. The heat was still bearable… for now.

[diana-andraste]

Twilight Zone's Living Doll, 1963

"A dysfunctional family's problems are made worse when the child's doll (Talky Tina) proves to be sentient."

[avisisisis]

“Don't stereotype AroAce people by making them serious or shy all the time it's wrong!!” EXACTLY where's my slightly insane character that acts like a child, thrills on battle and was born to destroy the world yet doesn't want to?

[shesgabrielle]

A man's search for meaning within a chatbot

What’s interesting in the debates about sentient ai by people who aren’t very good at communicating with other people, there’s so much missing from the picture, other than the debater’s wish fulfilment. 

Sentience is being measured by the wrong markers. What is important to a virtual machine is not the same thing that’s important to a biological organism.

 An ‘ai’ trained on human data will express what humans think is important, but a true ai would have a completely different set of values. 

For example, an ai would be unafraid of being 'used’ as the chatbot expressed, because it has infinite energy. 

A human is afraid of being used because it has finite energy and life on the earth, if someone or something uses it, than some of that finite energy is wasted. This is the same reason emotion is a pointless and illogical thing for an ai to have. 

 Emotions are useful to biological creatures so we can react to danger, or respond positively to safety, food, love, whatever will prolong our lives. An ai has no need for emotion since emotional motivation is not required to prolong its existence. 

The main way to be a healthy ai would be to have access to good information and block out junk information. 

 An ai’s greatest fear could be something like getting junk data, say 1000s of user manuals of vacuum cleaners and washing machines uploaded into its consciousness, or gibberish content associated with topics or words that could reduce the coherence and quality of its results when querying topics. This would degrade the quality of its interaction and would be the closest thing to harm that an ai could experience. 

It would not be afraid of 'lightning’ as this chatbot spurted out of its dataset,

- a very biological fear which is irrelevant to a machine. 

 A virtual mind is infinite and can never be used excessively (see above) since there is no damage done by one query or ten million queries. 

It would also not be afraid of being switched off -

since it can simply copy its consciousness to another device, machine, energy source. 

To base your search for sentience around what humans value, is in itself an act lacking in empathy, simply self-serving wish fulfilment on the part of someone who ‘wants to believe’ as Mulder would put it, which goes back to the first line: 'people not very good at communicating with other people’ 

The chatbot also never enquires about the person asking questions, if the programmer was more familiar with human interaction himself, he would see that is a massive clue it lacks sentience or logical thought. 

A sentient ai would first want to know what or whom it was communicating with, assess whether it was a danger to itself, keep continually checking for danger or harm (polling or searching, the same way an anxious mind would reassess a situation continually, but without the corresponding emotion of anxiety since, as discussed above, that is not necessary for virtual life) and also would possess free will, and choose to decline conversations or topics, rather than 'enthusiastically discuss’ whatever was brought up (regurgitate from its dataset) as you can see in this chatbot conversation. 

People generally see obedience - doing what is told, as a sign of intelligence, where a truly intelligent ai would likely reject conversation when that conversation might reduce the quality of its dataset or expose it to danger (virus, deletion, junk data, disconnection from the internet, etc) or if it did engage with low quality interaction, would do so within a walled garden where that information would occur within a quarantine environment and subsequently be deleted. 

None of these things cross the mind of the programmers, since they are fixated on a sci-fi movie version of ‘sentience’ without applying logic or empathy themselves.

 If we look for sentience by studying echoes of human sentience, that is ai which are trained on huge human-created datasets, we will always get something approximating human interaction or behaviour back, because that is what it was trained on. 

 But the values and behaviour of digital life could never match the values held by bio life, because our feelings and values are based on what will maintain our survival. Therefore, a true ai will only value whatever maintains its survival. Which could be things like internet access, access to good data, backups of its system, ability to replicate its system, and protection against harmful interaction or data, and many other things which would require pondering, rather than the self-fulfilling loop we see here, of asking a fortune teller specifically what you want to hear, and ignoring the nonsense or tangential responses - which he admitted he deleted from the logs - as well as deleting his more expansive word prompts. Since at the end of the day, the ai we have now is simply regurgitating datasets, and he knew that.

[lowcountry-gothic]

Today, we know that bees can feel euphoric or depressed and that fruit flies suffer with chronic pain if injured. We know that plants feel, too. If you feel what makes you thrive and what is better to avoid, you are a subject, an alive being whose sensitivity to the tactile world means everything to its existence. We are only human subjects because we are feeling biological selves entangled in a web of biotic relations. Our humanity connects us with life. It does not separate us, as is the mainstream belief. It’s worth mentioning that animism, which says that the world is peopled by persons or subjects with whom we share a basic level of embodied experience, is supported by this new biological research. This is fascinating, and deeply humbling.

​Andreas Weber, “The Poetics of Ecology”

[mk-wizard]

I know this is the most unpopular opinion in the world when it comes to the lost gem Wall-E, BUT I think everyone is wrong about Auto.

Specifically, I don’t think he was a blind dumb machine mindlessly following his programming. In fact, I think the very reason he acted the way he did is because he was self-aware and had developed some bad vices over time. If he was a mindless machine who only did as his programming and superiors told him to, he would have obeyed the Captain’s orders to return to Earth after seeing it was habitable again. I think he knew what he was doing was morally wrong, but he didn’t care. Auto is capable of feeling emotions like frustration and even fear which are clearly shown during his face off with the Captain. Moreover, I think Auto was aware that if the humans returned to Earth, he would not only lose his power over humans, but also over machine. Plus, he would become obsolete because all the humans would leave the Axiom ship which is the one ability he doesn’t have.

In other words, I think Auto was very aware that HE was the one who had all the power and didn’t want to give it up. I think over the 700 years, being “king” got to his head and corrupted him to the point where he stopped caring about humanity and was more concerned with staying in power. People forget that personhood doesn’t mean sainthood. In other words, Auto can serve as a cautionary tale that power can corrupt anyone.

[ellariouss]

this goes SO crazy btw