Trending: ‘sentient’

Lookups spiked 324% on June 13th, 2022

Why are people looking up sentient?

According to The New York Times:

Google placed an engineer on paid leave recently after dismissing his claim that its artificial intelligence is sentient, surfacing yet another fracas about the company’s most advanced technology.

What does sentient mean?

Sentient means "able to feel, see, hear, smell, or taste."

Where does sentient come from?

Sentient comes from the Latin verb sentire, meaning "to perceive" or "to feel."

It is related to words like sense, sensation, sentimental, and sensual.

Sentient can be pronounced either \SEN-she-int\ or \SEN-tee-int\.

What is notable about this use of sentient?

The field of artificial intelligence conducts research into the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers or the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior. The word sentient is often used to express the difference between what a computer is capable of accomplishing or imitating and the actual experience of a living organism.

Trend Watch is a data-driven report on words people are looking up at much higher search rates than normal. While most trends can be traced back to the news or popular culture, our focus is on the lookup data rather than the events themselves.