{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,22]],"date-time":"2026-09-22T19:11:47Z","timestamp":1790104307897,"version":"4.0.1"},"reference-count":45,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,19]],"date-time":"2026-08-19T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1787097600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Psychol."],"abstract":"<jats:p>The possibility of sentient artificial intelligence has moved from speculative philosophy to a practical interdisciplinary problem for AI, robotics, and human-robot interaction. Large language models, multimodal agents, and embodied robots can now produce first-person reports, maintain dialogue, use tools, act through sensors and effectors, and participate in socially meaningful contexts. These capacities invite two symmetrical errors: anthropomorphic over-attribution and premature dismissal. This Perspective proposes a prolegomenal framework for future research on sentient AI. Its distinctive contribution lies in operationally integrating four elements that have largely been developed in separate literatures: conceptual disambiguation, multi-theory indicator profiles, causal-mechanistic testing, and robotics-specific evidence and governance. The paper distinguishes sentience, consciousness, self-modeling, metacognition, agency, moral patienthood, and AI welfare; separates evidence about an AI system from evidence about human attribution; and proposes domain-specific ordinal evidence levels rather than binary verdicts or an aggregate sentience score. It further specifies welfare- and valence-relevant tests, a preregistered rating procedure, and a concrete protocol for an embodied care robot using sensorimotor lesions, self-location manipulations, memory ablations, and anti-anthropomorphism controls. The aim is not to offer a definitive test for machine sentience, but to show how research could become more scientifically tractable, psychologically informed, robotics-relevant, and ethically responsible.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/fpsyg.2026.1903644","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,19]],"date-time":"2026-08-19T04:39:54Z","timestamp":1787114394000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Sentient AI in robots and agents: prolegomena for an evidence-based research program"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"17","author":[{"given":"Antonio","family":"Chella","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"RoboticsLab, Department of Engineering, Universit\u00e0 degli Studi di Palermo","place":["Palermo, Italy"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,19]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"e1011465","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pcbi.1011465","article-title":"Integrated information theory (IIT) 4.0: formulating the properties of phenomenal existence in physical terms","volume":"19","author":"Albantakis","year":"2023","journal-title":"PLoS Comput. 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