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This fact brief was originally published as an experiment to test the concepts behind fact briefs.

Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of useful information in fact briefs like this one, not all of them reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

FACT BRIEF

Has artificial intelligence achieved sentience?

Friday, July 8, 2022

By Austin Tannenbaum

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According to Bloomberg, "the expert consensus is that it’s impossible" for artificial intelligence to achieve sentience "with the current state of technology."

Artificial intelligence designed to mimic human speech are fed "billions of books, online articles and sentences," which inform how they respond to prompts. However, such AI do not comprehend the meaning behind their responses. Instead, they are programmed to receive an input and automatically generate an appropriate output based on their database of human-speech examples. This input-ouput process is indicative of a highly complex machine rather than a self-aware subject that understands what it is doing and why its response makes sense.

Yahoo News similarly reported that, "Most experts ... argue that current artificial intelligence models — though becoming more advanced every day — still lack the complex abilities that are typically considered signs of sentience like self-awareness, intuition and emotions."

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

Bloomberg Are you a robot?

Yahoo News 360 Should we be worried about AI becoming sentient?

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Gigafact

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

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About fact briefs published on Gigafact

Fact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer “yes/no” answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact —a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process. See all fact briefs here.