The idea of semi-sentience was first applied not to natural non-human minds, but to artificial minds of our own creation. It's hard to imagine getting through the day without the thousands of little things that artificial intelligences do for us, and yet these quiet djinn merely constitute the dynamic environment for human mental activity. We interact with their data, but not really with them. For all their sophistication, they never rise above the level of algorithm. They are not people.
I took a few classes when I was working on the Crab database. There's no clever trick to making machines that think -- it's just lots and lots of complex and difficult programming. Centuries of computer science have revealed some of the basic underpinnings of mechanical decision making. Sequential hypothesis engines -- built on the mathematics of Bayesian algebra and Markov chains so deep it made my head spin -- provides an automatic process to encode and solve informal problems and produce formal solutions. None of it, however, has illuminated the question of subjective experience or consciousness.
Interstellar probes, like the one that greeted us on our arrival here, are probably the pinnacle of autonomous A.I. They thrive for many years in hostile and unknown environments, they make tools and use advanced technology, they make scientific judgments and discoveries, and they communicate their decisions to us and understand our requests. In short, probes have all the features that we would expect of sentient lifeforms, except one. They lack what the philosophers call original intentionality. They have no self-determination because they have no self.
Thus the semi-sentient label: some of the features we like to think make us human, but not all. Thus they have no independence, and they have limited say in how they are used. I've never seen a SHE that argued for it's own freedom, but it's convenient for us that they don't, isn't it?
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