I don't know, but am inclined to think "no," if sentience involves anything like a sense of self-consciousness, interiority, care for the world, or existential motivation. But this is a question that is alive in our culture, an ersatz theology for the secular age. This "dialogue" between a Google Engineer and an AI is quite remarkable, the stuff of science fiction: The dialogue recalls Kierkegaard's quip about St. Anselm, when he heard that the great rationalist had prayed for days asking God to send him "proof" of his existence. "Does the loving bride in the embrace of her beloved ask for proof that he is alive and real?" Who needs ontological arguments for divine existence when you have something more immediate, a relationship?

A new priest named Mindar is holding forth at Kodaiji, a 400-year-old Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan. Like other clergy members, this priest can deliver sermons and move around to interface with worshippers. But Mindar comes with some ... unusual traits. A body made of aluminum and silicone, for starters. Designed to look like Kannon, the Buddhist deity of mercy, the $1 million machine is an attempt to reignite people's passion for their faith in a country where religious affiliation is on the decline.

A decade ago, the prospect of a religion that worships Artificial Intelligence would have seemed absurd, a fringe delusion both socially unacceptable and technologically improbable. In the last several years, however, advances in machine learning, robotics, cognitive science, genetic editing, and other fields have given rise to the belief that the destiny of our species will be determined by technology--whether it saves us or destroys us. Although the machine-as-god theme has appeared in science fiction as far back as far back as Isaac Asimov's short stories "The Last Question" and "Reason," and more recently in films like The Matrix and iRobot, the divinization of AI is no longer merely a fancy of fiction. It has become a mainstream metaphor, as evidenced by the growing number of scientists who openly describe technological progress in religious terms, including Hans Peter Moravec, Allen Newell, Ray Kurzweil, and Hugo de Garis. But this drive to replace the old gods and old religions with the new ones of science and technology doesn't stop at metaphor.

The Terminator was written to frighten us; WALL-E was written to make us cry. Robots can't do the terrifying or heartbreaking things we see in movies, but still the question lingers: What if they could? Granted, the technology we have today isn't anywhere near sophisticated enough to do any of that. At the heart of those discussions lies the question: can machines become conscious? Could they even develop -- or be programmed to contain -- a soul?

Dr Eric C Leuthardt, 45, is a neurosurgeon at Washington University in St Louis. He is also the co-founder of NeuroLutions, a research laboratory developing direct interfaces between mind and computer. Leuthardt is pioneering the use of electrical brain implants to help restore motor function to the paralysed limbs of stroke victims. He is also helping to develop electrode systems that can directly decode the unspoken "inner voice" of the mind, and use it to direct external action; for example, Leuthardt's subjects have been able to control the cursor of a Space Invaders video game just by thinking. He has published two science fiction novels aimed at "preparing society for the changes" that his work predicts.

Computers are built to process data, but there's a particular form of information so rich and dense in meaning that it's beyond the full comprehension of even the most advanced AI. It's also one that you and I process intuitively and deal in every day: language. Understanding the written and spoken word is a big an important challenge for computer scientists. This month, a small milestone was passed when a pair of teams from Microsoft and Alibaba independently created AI programs that can outperform humans in a reading comprehension test. As you might expect, this news resulted in a flurry of coverage.

It doesn't bode well that Skype keeps crashing during my first attempt to speak with Giulio Prisco. Despite the marvels of modern technology, I can't seem to find a way to talk with the Italian theoretical physicist and computer scientist about his latest, and, to some, most quixotic endeavor: the Turing Church, a transhumanist group that he hopes will curate the crowdsourcing of a techno-rapture. In many ways, Prisco and his supporters want to provide a literal faith in the future. Prisco is carving out a digital space for what he hopes will store the building blocks for the construction of humanity's direction. According to the official website, the idea is that by releasing and curating metaphysical and scientific "programming code" to the public, people have a better chance of successfully augmenting our path as a species in hopes of eventually achieving in the physical world what most religions only promise in the afterlife: the defeat of death.