I honestly don't know if you are implying its obvious software _can't_ be sentient, or its obvious software _can_ be sentient. The fact that I can't tell which you mean proves that there is and should continue to be a debate over sentient machines.
The solution is anything but obvious. The closely related hard problem of consciousness is not called hard for nothing.
"hard" is the new way of saying "beyond physical", the new transcendent plane
> There is not just one problem of consciousness. “Consciousness” is an ambiguous term, referring to many different phenomena. Each of these phenomena needs to be explained, but some are easier to explain than others. At the start, it is useful to divide the associated problems of consciousness into “hard” and “easy” problems.
But I keep thinking about how much we've lost control in all this. The fact that we need to spend rivers of money on energy and GPUs for LLMs, to automate our super boring daily tasks (which didn't even need to exist in the first place) says a lot about our dysfunctionality. I would trade all this paraphernalia we created for the freedom to have my small farm, grow my own food, and be happy with my family and friends, too bad that this is a very, very distant dream.
Every now and then I bump into people on HN that have seen the light.
Well let me tell you it's all doable. The tiny bubble of people that live in a non existant alternative reality is just that, a tiny bubble.
I managed to escape all this nonesense, first mentally, then financially, and buy a little house where I can grow my own food - for hobby, I have plant pots in my house growing tomatoes and spring onions, doesn't work but I am learning - and be happy with family and friends.
Naturally I have a very nice tech room with all the cool stuff. I am not rich, but I am free. Fun thing is you don't need to completely erase the paraphernalia. The two things are not mutually exclusive. All you need to do is have a clear mental separation of the two (tech bubble and reality) and compartmentalize the sane from the insane - an easy thing to achieve when you surround yourself with down to earth people that don't run around scared of an LLM and don't regurgitate what a marketing campaign programmed them to do. Those people are the matrix drones that don't want to be saved, and in their mind it's all or nothing - hermit or tech slave. Most normal people are watching in awe how the tech industry turns itself into the subject of ridicule.
To be fair if you live in the US it's probably easier to achieve what you want. For the money I paid for a little box in the UK i'd have been able to buy a mansion there.