When you think about AI as simply being matrix multiplication, you get a clear answer. I can't believe anyone who's involved in the technical aspects of ML/AI as it stands today would even entertain this.
I could see it being the case if the person believes that at its core, our own human sentience IS really just advanced matrix multiplication (or other purely material processes, i.e. we're all just fleshy mainframes).
So, such a person might conclude that with sufficiently advanced matrix multiplication and other similar functions, any entity could achieve the same sort of sentience as us.
When you think about human sentience simply being electrochemical gradients among neurons, you get a clear answer. I can’t believe anyone who’s involved in the technical aspects of neuroscience would believe that humans are sentient.
Definition: sentient - able to perceive or feel things.
Ah ok, so you're saying that neuroscientists would say that nobody is sentient including themselves? Hmm, somehow I don't find your argument convincing.
Matrix multiplications are linear. Modern neural network methods usually make heavy use of nonlinearities. You could also say that quantum mechanics is just matrix multiplications, but look where it got us.
Matrix multiplication, followed by a nonlinear function. Rinse and repeat many times, and it can approximate arbitrarily complex functions. So the only way out of it is declaring that sentience cannot be described by a function.
