Many experts believe that the era of the self-aware AI is still far ahead in the future. They say that robotic sentience is still highly theoretical and needs ongoing research. However, several technologists and roboticists have claimed to having developed sentient machines. So, we have to ask, is it really that far off in the future? Or, has the so-called experts just been remiss in agreeing on standards to define true robotic sentience?

The original trilogy pit man against machine in a clearly drawn battle while also exposing humans as more machine-like than perhaps first thought and that machines are capable of possessing human qualities as well. Humans, for their part, are depicted as relentlessly driven as machines. Morpheus's faith in the Oracle's prophecy is unwavering, and his own followers follow him automatically. Trinity's loyalty to Neo has machine-like consistency. While Keanu Reeves' Neo exudes an almost robotic calm, and both he and Carrie-Anne Moss wear sleek, androgynous clothes. The Agents, by contrast, are fluid, adaptive, and creative, and Agent Smith infuses his dialogue with human emotions such as anger and disgust.

It's easy to get sucked into the hype around artificial intelligence (AI), but just as easy to get duped into thinking it's all hype. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Or, as tech luminary Mike Olson suggested, "The breathless attention paid to AGI and self-driving cars and whatnot blinds [us] to the value of narrowly-focused AI applications." By "narrowly focused" he was referring to the DeepMind announcement that it had released the "predicted structures for nearly all catalogued proteins known to science". This advance dramatically opens access to protein structures, thereby accelerating scientific discovery in fields as diverse as medicine and climate change. But the AI used is narrow in the sense that it isn't some sentient machine, thinking through protein structures.

There's a children's toy, called the See'n Say, which haunts the memories of many people born since 1965. It's a bulky plastic disc with a central arrow that rotates around pictures of barnyard creatures, like a clock, if time were measured in roosters and pigs. There's a cord you can pull to make the toy play recorded messages. The See'n Say is an input/output device, a very simple one. Put in your choice of a picture, and it will put out a matching sound.

Here's a big woolly question: How do we know when a machine is sentient? A few days ago, a Google software engineer and artificial intelligence (AI) researcher claimed the tech company's latest system for generating chatbots was exactly that: sentient. Since then, leading AI researchers have dismissed this claim, saying the AI was essentially faking it. Google's chatbot system isn't sentient, but one of its eventual successors may be. When -- or if the time comes, how -- will we know?

Language is one of the most intuitive ways humans use to communicate, alongside gestures and visual elements. Yet, we often take it for granted. Subtle factors that we generally consider insignificant, including our education, culture, previous experiences, and emotional states, influence how we use language as an effective communication tool. Misunderstanding others is a leading cause of frustration across all areas of our lives - among our family, friends, other loved ones, or employees, colleagues, and customers. In the case of business, misunderstanding is fraught with danger to reputation and profits.

The creators of these films imagine a world where humans have lost control of the technology they developed and must fight for survival of the human species. It could also be suggested the writers and directors of these films are predicting a world where these things happen. After all, many notable figures in the world of tech such as Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and even Stephen Hawking have all made warnings against the potential consequences of AI. But how accurate is the silver screen's depiction and are the fears of my friend based off of these films warranted? Is AI going rogue, building a robot army and attempting to eradicate humans as likely as finding a dead body on top of a lift or being attacked by a giant shark off the Isle of Wight?

Artificial consciousness is a matter of time. The hot topic of artificial intelligence developing a consciousness as a pre-condition of sentient machines is the subject of speculative debates and fake AI start-ups profiteering. A layer of EQ or emotional quotient on top of AI is promoted as affective computing, with its commercial promoters. For an AI program to demonstrate emotions (to become an emotional AI program), it needs to see emotions, hear our voices, and feel human anxiety. For this, "emotional AI must be able to extract emotional data from humans through conversational means by eye-tracking, skin response, voice, and written word analysis, brain activity via EEG, facial mapping, etc".

What does it mean for a robot to be self-aware? That's exactly what this robotics lab is investigating as they embark on a quest towards artificial consciousness. We develop machines that can design and make other machines - automatically." The Challenge of Determining Whether an A.I. Is Sentient https://slate.com/technology/2016/04/... "It is not easy to determine when an organism is sentient, however. A brief recount of past and present controversies and mistakes makes it clear that human beings are not great at recognizing sentience."

Imagine a world where humans co-existed with beings who, like us, had minds, thoughts, feelings, self-conscious awareness and the capacity to perform purposeful actions--but, unlike us, these beings had artificial mechanical bodies that could be switched on and off. That brave new world would throw up many issues as we came to terms with our robot counterparts as part and parcel of everyday life. How should we behave towards them? What moral duties would we have? What moral rights would such non-human persons have? Would it be morally permissible to try to thwart their emergence?