How far away do you think humanity is from creating sentient AI?

🤖 It already exists today (22%): “AI has come such a long way in recent years to the point where its own engineers do not understand AI programming. In other words, the creators do not know what they have created, so why rule out the possibility that AI is sentient if we truly don't know what is going on?”

✋ Less than 5 years (18%): “The hardest part is defining consciousness/sentience. I really like the list of 5 challenges Ernie Davis and Gary Marcus came up with to counter Elon Musk on the question, and I think AI will easily be able to do these things in another 5 years.”

✋✋ 5–10 years (11%): “Science and discovery increase in an exponential pattern. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’ll develop it sooner rather than later, but we still have a few years before becoming that technologically advanced.”

⏳ 10–20 years (5%): “Alexa, where’s my phone?”

⌛ 20+ years (13%): “Emotions will be very difficult to master. So will instilling common sense. 20+ years seems appropriate given our current state of technology. ”

❌ It’ll never happen (31%): “I genuinely don’t believe that computers and robots could TRULY feel, not just mimic feeling. I think scientists are creating increasingly advanced programming and machinery meant to imitate real life, but at the end of the day it’s all manufactured and man-made, not really ‘real.’”

+Note on sample size: We received 10,256 responses.👏🥳 Some may have been lightly edited for grammar or clarity.

BONUS QUESTION: Who actually has their read receipts on?

• 🙋‍♀️ On: 19%
• 🙅‍♀️ Off: 81%