What I don't understand, personally, is how people who are apparently experts in this domain seem to consistently treat the word "sentience" as a synonym of "sapience," which is what they are really talking about. It's almost as though their expertise comes from several decades' worth of bad science fiction writing rather than from an understanding of the English language.

Since you broached it, would you mind to explain sentience vs. sapience? Curious to know the difference.

> It's almost as though their expertise comes from several decades' worth of bad science fiction

Oof. Thanks - thats a novel way of insulting. But on a personal note, you're mistaken: Many of us do research not because we want to be identified as experts, but we're genuinely curious about the world. And I'd be happy to learn even from a high schooler if they've something to offer.

And regardless of how others define these terms, I’d describe lambda as sapient and not sentient. Sentient means having feelings (eg sentimental) while sapient means wise.

Can wisdom emerge from statistical models? It actually seems inevitable, to me, if you can abstract high enough. I mean, much of human learning is statistical. Wisdom comes from this kind of statistical experience, not memorizing symbols.

(Btw, I’m working on using the complete works of Plato to fine tune GPT3 and will use crowdsourcing to compare the perceived wisdom of the original to the generated.)