The Machine with a Human Face: From Artificial Intelligence to Artificial Sentience

The main challenge of technology is to facilitate the tasks and to transfer the functions that are usually performed by the humans to the non-humans. However, the pervasion of machines in everyday life requires that the non-humans are increasingly closer in their abilities to the ordinary thought, action and behaviour of the humans. This view merges the idea of the Humaniter, a longstanding myth in the history of technology: an artificial creature that thinks, acts and feels like a human to the point that one cannot make the difference between the two. In the wake of the opposition of Strong AI and Weak AI, this challenge can be expressed in terms of a shift from the performance of intelligence (reason, reasoning, cognition, judgment) to that of sentience (experience, sensation, emotion, consciousness). In other words, the challenge of technology if this possible shift is taken seriously is to move from the paradigm of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to that of Artificial Sentience (AS). But for the Humaniter not to be regarded as a mere myth, any intelligent or sentient machine must pass through a Test of Humanity that refers to or that differs from the Turing Test. One can suggest several options for this kind of test and also point out some conditions and limits to the very idea of the Humaniter as an artificial human.