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Webster’s dictionary defines Sentience as “the ability to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively.”

Implicit in this definition is that to properly perceive and experience subjectively one must be able to contextualize events and imagine a future with themselves in it. How is this done? By forming biases and proclivities due to the positive and negative effects of direct and indirect experiences. These effects are called pain and pleasure, and they are the fundamental building blocks of all emotions.

Put another way true intelligence, consciousness, and sentience cannot be achieved without the context provided by emotions. What about Artificial Intelligence? Could a computer become sentient without experiences, without emotions? I would imagine that we could do a good job of faking sentience in a machine (someday), but I would also argue that without the ability to develop complex emotional context a machine would never be truly sentient. Additionally, if it were able to develop sentience or human-like intelligence, the advantages to it being a machine would most likely be lost due to the necessary complexities and imprecision that is required to “experience subjectively.”

So, another question arises, what If we did build a machine that could feel, perceive or experience subjectively? What would the experience be like for the machine?

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Created in a robotics laboratory in a city floating 50KM above the surface of Venus, Tarkara struggles with existential angst as he progresses from an idea into a fully functioning and legally sentient adult.