Journal of Social Computing

Introduction of the special issue:

The development and ubiquity of generative AI models that generate text, images, and speech have re-ignited conversations around sentience. Historically, the Turing test was created to identify milestones in AI development; however the field has surpassed that stage. Absent a clear identification of “sentience” a wide range of opinions exist on whether or not this new wave of models is “sentient” or whether Artificial General Intelligence is achievable.  However, AI is not the first scientific field to consider the concept of sentience, consciousness, awareness, or personality. Fields such as neuroscience, animal behavioral studies, philosophy, theology, and applied social sciences have addressed these issues in various ways. 

Highlights of the special issue:

In this special issue, we invite submissions in a broad range of fields to address the following challenge: how would we know if an artificial intelligence is sentient? We also welcome submissions on perspectives and challenges that may, for example, question the notion of sentience of inanimate objects, the value of sentience as a scientific objective in technological applications, create scientific rubrics or benchmarks for sentience, discuss how sentience tests have been applied in other fields and how they could be applied in AI, or any related topic. 

Important dates:

Manuscript submission deadline: July 1, 2023

Notification of reviews: September 1, 2023

Submission of final revised paper: October 1, 2023

Notification of acceptance: November 1, 2023

Publications (Tentative): December 2023

Submission guidelines:

Accepted papers will be published in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library as open access. No page charges will be requested for publications. No page limitations are set for paper submissions and publications.

Paper submission link: https://mc03.manuscriptcentral.com/jsc-tup. The manuscript type should be selected as “Special Issue on Assessing Sentience of AI Systems”.

Submission templates in LaTeX and Word available at: https://www.sciopen.com/journal/2688-5255#submission-guidelines

Guest editor:

Rumman Chowdhury, Parity Consulting and Harvard University, USA. E-mail: rchowdhury@gmail.com