Slang & Culture
Sentient Machine
A recurring phrase in debates over whether an AI can be conscious or self-aware.
Origin · no single documented coiner
No single documented coiner — the phrase combines the philosophical concept of "sentience" with "machine" and predates modern AI. Its clearest recent real-world flashpoint: in June 2022, Google engineer Blake Lemoine was placed on leave (and fired that July) after publicly claiming the company's LaMDA chatbot was sentient — a story that pushed the phrase into mainstream AI discourse.