Will AI ever = conciousness or sentience?

[Whateverist]

On another website I visit it seems most people think our machines will be joining us as sentient beings in their own right any day now.

I think that it is theoretically possible, but very, very difficult to do. Any day now? Definitely not. In the distant future? Only if it is done on purpose. If, theoretically, a machine were created to [perfectly] replicate the human brain, couldn't said machine be called sentient?

I agree that machines are not going to accidently become aware. If it is to happen at all we would have to make a very purposeful effort. Lets imagine we're willing to do that and manage to put the best program possible into a robotic body equipped to physically do what we can do and with the best sensory input devices we can find. While we should be able to fool a few people, is that really the only test? Are we sentient because we are able to present ourselves in such a way as to fool others? If we fool anyone it should be because we seem to have qualities of a certain kind. Surely it can't all be a matter of imitation if in the end there isn't something in particular which is being imitated. What is that something?

If the machine has sentience then it cares about what happens and it has subjective states arising from its perceptual input. How exactly do we program in those? We could probably program it to deliver variations on the macbethian theme and to utilize reflective language (no small feat) in response to selected criteria, but it is hard for me to see how this gets at the experience of sentience itself and not just its appearance.

The other site hasn't a Star Trek theme but it does harbor many who think free will is illusory. These guys are monists who probably do think their own subjective states are programmed into them and no more or less genuine than that which we could program into a machine. (I think they need to get outside more often.)