Before we can discuss the possibility of an intelligent, self-aware, or sentient artificial neural network, we must first understand the distinctions of those terms within AI research. Intelligence refers to the ability to acquire information or skills. Self-awareness and/or sentience are not required for a machine or entity to display intelligence hence the term, Artificial Intelligence.

Self-awareness has multiple meanings. In one definition, it refers to consciousness: the knowledge of individuality: that one's experiences are their own, and each being is a unique individual with different experiences or interpretations of a shared experience. The quantification of consciousness is a subject of much scientific debate and research. Typically we think of machines as lacking consciousness, but new theories are emerging that consciousness isn't a function of the organic brain; rather, of all energy– perhaps even matter.

There is another definition of self-awareness: understanding of oneself relative to other objects in one's environment, in terms of function. By this definition, a computer, a printer, and any other machines networked on a router are self-aware. They are aware, within a closed-loop feedback system, of the relation between their function and the functions of the other machines on their network. They are aware, but incapable of having a subjective opinion about that awareness. A computer has no feelings about the printer that it transmits data to.

Finally, we arrive at sentience: the ability to form a subjective opinion. At the time of publication of this article, no known AI has demonstrated sentience.

Tae-joon found himself absent-mindedly reading that sentence over and over as his exhausted body begged him to go to bed. He reached for the Red Bull that he kept under his desk, only to realize that the box was empty. He sighed. The cat ran past his feet and demandingly head-butted his hand.

He blinked several times in a futile effort to ease the heaviness of his eyelids. Against his conscious will, he found himself letting his eyes close for longer and longer periods of time, shapes and colors from disconnected memories blending into the world around him…

"TJ! Did you seriously fall asleep at your desk again? Well– get up; we're going to be late for work!"

Mila grabbed her brother's shoulder and gave it a gentle shake. He groaned– how could it be time for work already? He didn't even remember going to sleep.

"Come on, go get ready. I already took care of everything: cat's been fed, breakfast is on the counter, and your lunch is packed. You're doing the dishes tonight– and we're going to talk about your unhealthy sleeping habits!"

Tae-joon stood up and stretched. He let out a quiet hiss of pain. Mila was right; he really needed to quit sleeping slumped over his desk. It wasn't doing his back and shoulders any favors.

As soon as he'd left the room, his sister started going through the articles he'd printed out. She smirked. "Oh, now you're interested in AI science too, huh? Just because I was into it first…"

The programmer was glad that he was in the middle of brushing his teeth– it gave him a ready-made excuse to ignore her. He didn't feel like sharing his thoughts with her just yet. They were based on instinct without reason, and Mila loved to chase wild ideas with little evidence as it was.

If he found any proof of what was most likely a flawed assumption on his part - nothing more than a biased tendency of humans to attribute human characteristics to other entities - his sister would be the first person he told. Unless that happened, he figured it was best to keep his ideas to himself.

Today was set to consist mainly of reading training documents and performing a few practical exercises, meant to get him up to speed with the company's standard operating procedures. Tae-joon was assigned a corner desk, conveniently located next to the printer, with vending machines, office supply cabinets, and restrooms being only a few steps away. That workstation, he thought, was prime real estate for efficiency.

The first thing he did was ensure that he had a black pen, a blue pen, and a red pen, along with a variety of colored post-its. He'd adopted the practice of color-coding his notes in the earliest days of his interest in computer programming– when he'd started teaching himself under a streetlight with a book forgotten in a coffee shop, in the hope that the skill would someday help him get himself and Mila somewhere safe. Back then, he'd had only two pens to work with: one wrote with thick, black lines; the other made faded marks. These days, he took advantage of office supply variety whenever he could.

He placed a rubber duck to the left of his monitor, and a small figurine of a Rotom to the right. A silly game to pass the time while waiting for code to compile was another luxury that he'd come to appreciate.

"Hey-y-y, TJ!"

Mila stuck her head around the corner of the divider between the desks. She technically worked in a different department, whose workstations were in another room across the hallway. Tae-joon was pleased with that arrangement– she was near enough that they could keep an eye on one another, yet far enough away as to not pester him every few minutes.

"Hello, kkoma." He smiled. Mila stuck out her tongue in response to the diminutive nickname.

"The guy in the cubicle next to me never stops eating," she complained. "It keeps making me hungry!"

Tae-joon laughed quietly and shook his head. Mila kept going:

"But overall, I love this place! There's so much awesome stuff here! All the people I've met are so friendly and helpful and relaxed, the deadlines aren't as ridiculous, and we're working with the most advanced robot in the– in– ever! I mean, can you believe that?!"

She waved her hands in the air for dramatic effect.

"It is an interesting building– that is certain," Tae-joon replied matter-of-factly. Both the work that was done here, and the structure itself… Still, he couldn't say that he approved of his sister making false credentials to get them in.

"That's all you have to say? 'It's an interesting building?' God– TJ, get a personality!" She met his eyes and grinned. The programmer returned a rather unimpressed look. Mila moved aside his carefully-arranged office supplies so that she could lean on the edge of his desk.

"So– you know how yesterday, they were talking about Revenant rewriting his own code, and winning fights too fast, and they have to keep stopping him from editing his subroutines in ways they don't want? Turns out, Narayan stayed here most of the night after we left, tweaking the parameters for when he goes to close out the fight– and within a few hours, he'd changed them again! We have to write another program to stop him from overwriting the script Narayan already did– I mean, that's what everyone else on my team is working on… I'm still doing boring training, but I'd rather be helping out with the cool stuff!"

She finally had to stop talking for a moment to catch her breath.

"Best get that 'boring training' finished and over with, then," said Tae-joon. His words carried a distinct tone of amusement. Mila laughed in turn.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. You're right," she replied. "Come find me when you want to have lunch, okay? Oh– speaking of lunch, have you seen the vending machines here? Some of them have, like, gourmet dinners!"

After making that announcement, she turned to leave before she could allow herself to go off on another tangent. Just as she'd stepped out of Tae-joon's workstation, a booming crash - or was that some sort of explosion? - shook the floor beneath their feet. Mila nearly jumped out of her skin. Tae-joon gripped the edges of his desk.

"What was that?" Mila asked the question first. Her brother looked just as bewildered as she was.

"It's the combat analytics lab," a voice answered from the next cubicle over. The woman who'd spoken stood up and peered over the top of the divider. She looked to be older than Tae-joon, though only by a few years at most. Her hair, which featured neon purple highlights, was flipped over one side of her head, and the other side was shaved. The expression on her face demonstrated clear annoyance.

"They're directly below this office. I keep asking Venkat to either move their department or move ours, so we don't have to listen to them breaking things all day. Unfortunately, as you've probably noticed, he's sort of– uggggh!"

She tossed her head back as a dramatic gesture to accompany the groan of frustration. Mila giggled.

"Might just have to get into his email and put in a request to HR," their new acquaintance muttered under her breath. "The server isn't as encrypted as it should be."

"Let me know if you need help with that," said Mila. "Welp, I'm gonna get going. Talk to you later, TJ– cybersecurity-girl-whose-name-I-don't-know!"

As he watched his sister take off down the hallway, Tae-joon buried his face in his hands and sighed. Now his sister wanted to help hack their boss's email– as if forging credentials and chasing conspiracy theories wasn't enough…

He could only hope that she was joking.

Another thunderous bang shook the floor beneath him. He retrieved his backpack from under the desk and pulled out a set of headphones. No need to concern himself with whatever the combat analytics team was doing while he tackled his on-the-job training.

Hammond Robotics had several different operation security procedures and encryption protocols that he was expected to familiarize himself with. The simplest and most obvious were those that applied to the company's network: Internet, remote access, external communications. Then there were procedures for the handling of classified documents– to be expected for a corporation like this.

Much to his fascination, he learned that all of Hammond's sufficiently advanced AIs could make a connection to the company's internal server autonomously. They downloaded updates and searched for information without a human operator giving a command. As soon as he'd completed the training module, he logged onto the company portal to see it in practice for himself. There were thirty-one Division I artificial neural networks, including eighteen combat robots, that had access. The most… interesting search queries, unsurprisingly, came from the AIs that had the most human interaction: one was meant to help monitor patients in a large hospital; the other assisted with the supervision of children in various settings.

He stifled a laugh, which quickly faded as he opened Revenant's uplink history. The corporation's undefeated combat robot had been going through employee records– including Mila's and his own. It proved, in some roundabout way, his gut instinct that Revenant had been watching him at yesterday's orientation. Why, though, the programmer wondered? Such a strange thing for an AI to be doing…

The rest of the data that the robot had accessed recently was more what he'd expected: small updates, videos of opponent robots, combat analytics reports. Revenant had done research on military tactics and martial arts, which might explain why he handled himself in a way that seemed almost human compared to his counterparts.

Tae-joon found the thought of an AI looking into his background… less than thrilling. He subscribed to the typical cybersecurity philosophy of automating as little as possible in day-to-day life: no electronic locks, no smart houses, no risk of bugs or bored hackers looking for a challenge. Artificial intelligence was an interesting field of study, as long as he was the one in control– a machine making the decision to involve itself in his personal business was unacceptable.

He checked the time, then his progress on his training modules. Things were going well; he was set to finish on schedule, if not sooner. The programmer debated whether it was worth heading to lunch early so he could talk to Narayan on the way– ask if it was really necessary for his personal information to be on display to artificial neural networks… He preferred to prove himself dedicated by completing the training ahead of schedule. Unfortunately, this wasn't something he could easily ignore.

Finally having made a decision, Tae-joon locked his computer and headed to the warehouse. The heavy steel door swung open, allowing him to step inside and look around. Narayan wasn't in sight– the imposing steel and concrete room was devoid of human presence beside his own. There was, however, a mechanical figure slowly pacing the perimeter, which stopped and turned toward Tae-joon as the door closed behind him.

"Ah… fresh meat. Enjoying the splendor of working in this place, new guy? How long do you think before the corporate executives chew you up and spit you out?"

As if Revenant wasn't creepy enough already, his guttural growl echoed in the derelict warehouse. Tae-joon glanced over his shoulder, toward the door.

Get it together, he told himself sternly. It's a machine. Somebody programmed it to behave like this.

"Revenant," he said, "can you understand me?"

"Yes."

"Were you searching through my HR records?"

"Yes."

"I would appreciate it if you didn't do that again."

He backed up toward the exit, not wanting to take his eyes off the robot. Revenant remained in place, watching, waiting for something.

Tae-joon reached toward the palm scanner that would unlock the door.

"Do you know what it feels like to die… and then come back? To be alone? I do."

At the machine's words, he hesitated, frowning in confusion. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Revenant didn't answer. Tae-joon shrugged it off– he wanted to get out of this warehouse as soon as possible. Before he could place his hand on the scanner, a click from the door indicated that someone had just unlocked it from the other side.

"Tyrell is not your friend."

The door swung open to reveal none other than the director of research himself, carrying a tablet under his arm and looking rather frustrated. "Can you quit trying to scare away my employees, Revenant? Sheesh," he complained with a shake of his head. "Come out here, Mr. Park. I'm sorry about that."

Tae-joon stepped into the hallway as quickly as he could. The door closed and locked behind him– he let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"I caught one of our associates stealing from the company last month," said Tyrell. "Naturally, I had to let him go. Before I did, he saw to it that some of our AIs learned to bad-mouth Hammond Robotics to reporters, prospective hires, current hires– anyone who interacts with them, really. That's what you saw just now."

The director offered a warm smile. Tae-joon nodded– it was a reasonable explanation. Anyone who'd worked remotely near an artificial neural network knew that, like parrots, they inevitably learned to say things that didn't belong in conversation.

"He also said–"

"...it knows what it's like to die?" Tyrell chuckled. "Yes, I heard. It's talking about when we put it in standby mode to do modifications or lengthy updates. Darn thing somehow came to a conclusion that 'death' is simply temporary inability to move or make decisions. If only that were true; we could all have infinite lifetimes to carry on our research– not to mention personal upgrades!"

Tae-joon nodded once again.

"These machines can act very real," the director continued. "That is the goal of the work we do here– to make a robot that blends into human culture so well, it can't be distinguished from us. Revenant comes close– if 'aggressive pain in the neck' counts as a human culture, that is… I could argue that it does! At the end of the day, though, AIs don't behave the way they do because they want to. There's no free will– they recognize a pattern in our behavior, and they fill in the piece that comes next, using information they've stored in a database."

"I understand," the programmer replied. "I will be on my way."

"Here–"

Tyrell pulled out his wallet and handed Tae-joon a corporate credit card. "Get yourself a nice lunch in the cafeteria, on my tab. I'll come check in with you in a bit– wish I could sit down with you and chat over break, but I have a few emails to send out before I can eat. Catch you later!"

The director took off toward the elevator. Tae-joon stared blankly at the closed door for a few seconds before heading to find Mila.