The major thing AI lacks is continuous parallel “prompting” through a variety of channels including sensory, biofeedback, and introspection / meta-thought about internal state and thinking.

AI currently transforms a given input into an output. However it cannot accept new input in the middle of an output. It can’t evaluate the quality of its own reasoning except though trial and error.

If you had 1000 AIs operating in tandem and fed a continuous stream of prompts in the form of pictures, text, meta-inspection, and perhaps a simulation of biomechanical feedback with the right configuration, I think it might be possible to create a system that is a hell of an approximation of sentience. But it would be slow and I’m not sure the result would be any better than a human — you’d introduce a lot of friction to the “thought” process. And I have to assume the energy cost would be pretty enormous.

In the end it would be a cool experiment to be part of, but I doubt that version would be worth the investment.