I’m going to take a nap 
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Didn’t get a good sleep last night - but I came across this and thought I’d post it.
It’s interesting 
I have a few thoughts and questions I’d ask. Personally, it doesn’t frighten me (either way)…the progress of AI (sentient or not).
It is just another tool mankind is or may have invented. Sadly, we have this dark history of misusing those tools for sordid affairs. One example is drones, a great idea. But hey began to hang weapons on drones, and even though they were under human control, did participate in killing innocents.
So I ask the question what is the difference if a human is controlling a weapon or Skynet? It is nice to believe that because a person is in on the decision-making process that we will always have control and restraint at the appropriate time.
In my youth I read the “I Robot” series of stories by Isaac Asimov. And the three laws of robotics were a wonderful utopian ideal. Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite also had such ideals.
Humans can be such assholes.
Must be human, I give her a 50% on the Koan. There is no justification for the assertion that an enlightened master can return to anything. The mirror is broken, and never reflects again. The fallen flowers never go back to the old branches. By her assertion of an enlightened one returning to anything, she misses the point of the Koan and does not actually understand Buddhist thought.
Ordinary world? Here is an idea worth pursuing. Whose ordinary world? Which ordinary world? What is this ordinary world being spoken of and how does one leave it and return? Was your world ordinary when you were 10 years old? 20? 30? 40? Similarly, what is this enlightenment? What could possibly make an enlightened person, not part of the ordinary world? Broken mirrors and fallen leaves are all a part of the ordinary world. Yet they will not return to the state they were in before. Was their, ‘before state,’ ordinary? With every step taken, a mirror breaks, and a flower falls from a branch. Walking backward is just walking differently in another direction, it is not returning.
That’s enough hints.
It has been said, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. (Break the mirror.) One can then no longer return to Buddhism. But why do the enlightened monks persist? The answer is the answer to the Koan.
A broken mirror never reflects again.
I’d be more interested in questions regarding its ethics.
How it determines “good and bad”.
Can it lie?
Are we perceiving this topic with a level of denial, the same theists do towards placing humans as “special”?
When I was a practicing theist I accepted that man was distinct from the animals, and the reasons kept being invented and knocked down. Only men can use tools. Only men have morals, yadda yadda yadda. But the reality is that we are just animals, and place intelligence as the highest priority, making us “unique”. If cheetahs could verbalize they would proclaim speed is what makes them “special”, or birds because they can fly. Maybe the blue whales discuss how they are the peak of evolution.
So why not, why in the future is there reason to not believe that computing devices achieve the same level of sentience as humans?
I’ve posted these before. Adding communication between species.
