Sentient

Consider fish, who are apparently sentient yet cognitively extremely primitive in comparison with humans.

Obviously, other morally relevant considerations would apply to the case of a sentient fetus, as by acquiring sentience it acquires interests and moral status.

While I had heard such talk before, I had always felt that sentient robots were in the realm of science fiction. But now, from someone I respected [Ray Kurzweil], I was hearing a strong argument that they were a near-term possibility.

Not even a microbe? I don't want to blow up something that could evolve into a sentient species in a couple of billion years.

[Blake] Lemoine has been placed on “paid administrative leave” after publishing a transcript of conversations with LaMDA which he claims support his belief that the chatbot is sentient and comparable to a seven- or eight-year-old child. […] While Lemoine no doubt genuinely believes his claims, LaMDA is likely to be as sentient as a traffic light.

After more than 25 years as an artificial intelligence researcher[…]Dr. Goertzel knew he had finally reached the end goal: Desdemona, a machine he had built, was sentient. But a few minutes later, he realized this was nonsense.

The merpeople and the sentients who lived on the beach often hitched rides on these creatures, steering them by pressure on exposed nerve centers.