sentient

Etymology

From Latin sentiēns (“feeling, perceiving”), present active participle of sentiō.

adj

1. Experiencing sensation, thought, or feeling.
2. Able to consciously perceive through the use of sense faculties.
3. (loosely, chiefly science fiction) Possessing human-like awareness and intelligence.
   Not even a microbe? I don't want to blow up something that could evolve into a sentient species in a couple of billion years. 2002, André Bormanis, “Silent Enemy”, in Star Trek: Enterprise, season 1, episode 12, spoken by Jonathan Archer
   Lemoine has been placed on “paid administrative leave” after publishing a transcript of conversations with LaMDA which he claims support his belief that the chatbot is sentient and comparable to a seven- or eight-year-old child. […] While Lemoine no doubt genuinely believes his claims, LaMDA is likely to be as sentient as a traffic light. 2022-06-14, Toby Walsh, “Labelling Google’s LaMDA chatbot as sentient is fanciful. But it’s very human to be taken in by machines”, in The Guardian
   After more than 25 years as an artificial intelligence researcher[…]Dr. Goertzel knew he had finally reached the end goal: Desdemona, a machine he had built, was sentient. But a few minutes later, he realized this was nonsense. 2022-08-05, Cade Metz, “A.I. Is Not Sentient. Why Do People Say It Is?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

noun

1. Lifeform with the capability to feel sensation, such as pain.
2. (loosely, chiefly science fiction) An intelligent, self-aware being.
   The merpeople and the sentients who lived on the beach often hitched rides on these creatures, steering them by pressure on exposed nerve centers. 1965, Philip José Farmer, The Maker of Universes