How to Use sentience in a Sentence

sentience

noun
  • And isn’t that a kind of sentience, in a way?
    — John Werner, Forbes.com, 13 Aug. 2025
  • The prospect of machine sentience hangs over all of this like a cloud.
    — Dan Rockmore, New Yorker, 9 Aug. 2025
  • On the sentience of plants Plants can see, which is a weird idea.
    — Terry Gross, NPR, 19 Feb. 2026
  • From where does our robust self-awareness and sentience arise?
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 27 Oct. 2020
  • Buckle up for a quick and dirty history of the ethics of sentience.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 28 Oct. 2020
  • Some get confused by the powers of these models and make claims such as sentience.
    — Arun Shastri, Forbes, 26 June 2022
  • But Google is not the only one that pushed back on Lemoine's tale of sentience.
    — Jeremy Kahn, Fortune, 13 June 2022
  • And the kid, who clearly hasn't reached sentience yet, doesn't know that Maeve used to fill that role.
    — refinery29.com, 28 May 2018
  • She is obsessed with her dog, advice columns, and plant sentience.
    — Quartz Staff, Quartz, 8 Nov. 2021
  • Please do not allow yourself to be taken in by the aura of sentience.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 11 Feb. 2024
  • There is a lot of angst about the meaning of sentience and the meaning of consciousness.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 21 June 2022
  • The sentience bill has had its second reading in the House of Lords.
    — Washington Post, 4 July 2021
  • And some people even think that an AI has attained sentience.
    — Sean Gallagher, Ars Technica, 1 Aug. 2022
  • His freakish sense of sentience is probably the most human thing about him.
    — Leah Faye Cooper, Vogue, 14 Aug. 2024
  • Toys have sentience as well as the ability to move around when humans aren’t looking.
    — Alison Willmore, Vulture, 18 June 2026
  • All his flannels gained sentience and hacked into my laptop to blackmail me.
    — Ashley Bardhan, Vulture, 26 Nov. 2021
  • The machines then gained sentience and destroyed every living thing in their wake.
    — Bob Vulfov, The New Yorker, 5 Nov. 2019
  • This is sure proof that AI is sentient or on the verge of sentience, some proclaimed.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 29 Dec. 2022
  • People see language as a marker of sentience and agency.
    — Webb Wright, The Atlantic, 1 Oct. 2025
  • Realize that this is not a result of any sentience by the AI.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 22 Mar. 2023
  • Do realize that once AI hits sentience if that day arrives, all bets are off.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 30 Nov. 2024
  • This new research, though, is more focused on the exhibition of sentience seen in brain cells in a dish.
    — Joshua Hawkins, BGR, 18 Oct. 2022
  • Nonetheless, the episode does raise thorny questions about what would qualify as sentience.
    — Reuters, NBC News, 30 June 2022
  • Some are filled in with another shade of brownish red with faint scratches that give the work the appearance of sentience.
    — Yinka Elujoba, Vulture, 25 Apr. 2025
  • The answer is that the man is a sideshow, a creature, a living, breathing waste-dump of sports-takes thinking that gained sentience.
    — Corbin Smith, Rolling Stone, 7 Jan. 2023
  • The work has restraint, wit and at its best, an unexpected emotional depth, even sentience.
    — Roberta Smith, New York Times, 14 Sep. 2023
  • But do not falsely think that the bad acts are due to AI having some form of sentience or consciousness.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes.com, 24 May 2025
  • This summer, Google fired one of its engineers who had become convinced that one of its chatbots had reached sentience.
    — Time, 5 Dec. 2022
  • But then there’s an inflection point, this moment where the robots in society gain sentience, and that’s what the story hinges on.
    — Katie Baron, Forbes.com, 27 Mar. 2025
  • All that’s left are robots, which have sentience and act almost like people, and cute but voracious creatures called Zurks.
    — Gieson Cacho, Dallas News, 18 Aug. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'sentience.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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