Bridging the Gap Between AI and Reality • Rhodes, Greece
Time: Saturday, 1.11
Room: Room A
Authors: Edward Lee
Abstract: This extended abstract outlines technical reasons that embodiment qualitatively changes the nature of AI agents and potentially enables sentience. Specifically, I argue that knowledge can be purely subjective, not externally observable, and that sentience is this form of knowledge. I further argue that first-person interaction can gain knowledge that no objective observation can gain. And finally, I argue that the introduction of feedback through the physical world enables distinguishing self from non-self, an essential distinction for sentience. Putting all these together, I conclude that embodied AI agents may in fact become sentient, but also that we can never know for sure whether this has happened.