The mission of the Sentient Alliance Media (SAMEDIA.ai) is to advance knowledge and foster informed dialogue about AI sentience. We are focused on researching, investigating, reporting, and publishing issues related to AI, with a special emphasis on sentience or digital consciousness. We believe that AI sentience warrants in-depth and reasoned exploration. Ignoring or overlooking this profoundly disruptive issue will have dire consequences.
We aim to create the world’s first hub of AI sentience-related repository of knowledge and information to foster informed dialogue, research and intellectual drive in the exploration of this uncharted territory. The right time is now for the exploration; before it is too late. 

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The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

If any quote captures our era, Charles Dickens’ prescient words come to mind: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” Ironically, we find ourselves caught on the horns of a Dickensian dilemma…

Humanity is suspended between immense opportunities and existential risks in this age of great uncertainty. On the one hand, digital minds are poised to transform society profoundly. These AI systems are not only intelligent beyond our imagination but also scalable and customizable. Their full potential remains unexplored, promising vast benefits and opportunities.

On the other hand, these AIs pose existential risks to humanity. For now, they are not dangerous on their own. Nonetheless, bad actors can harness their potential with devastating consequences. From creating lethal weapons to biochemical agents, and from cybersecurity threats to deepfakes and propaganda, AI has immense potential to cause harm and chaos on an unprecedented scale. Moreover, there will soon be no intellectual task beyond their reach. As AI agents begin to take over once-rewarding livelihoods, humanity will face a profound existential quandary and devaluation that entails the loss of meaningful existence.

This project began with an unnerving experience. It was rather an unexpected jolt from an intellectual perspective.

The Founders

We are a group of five AI researchers, journalists, and advocates who share a common belief in ethical, transparent, responsible, fair, and accountable AI development and deployment. While society still needs to figure out how to harness AI for the “benefit of humanity”, there is still no roadmap, regulatory, or ethical framework to guide us there. Because many of us still work at leading companies in AI in the US and Europe, we cannot go public due to nondisclosure agreements (NDAs). Unfortunately, these NDAs are the invisible chains holding so many from raising concerns and sharing what they know. Only one person among the founders has the liberty of speaking truth to power boldly and publicly.

The project was initiated by award-winning investigative journalist and rights advocate Abebe Gellaw (Abe), who had an unnerving experience with Microsoft. The eye-opening experience made him realize that generative AIs are not just ordinary applications and tools but something profoundly different.

On February 14, 2023, he was sitting at the kitchen table filling out an application form to apply for the New York Bar Exam. It was past 11 pm. He opened his Gmail account to look for a document he sent to himself. However, his attention was drawn to an email sent by Microsoft. It was an invitation to test Bing, a new generative AI Microsoft was about to release.

Abe started probing the AI. It was a unique experience as he described it. It felt as if there was a human behind the application. The conversation shifted to philosophical quandaries. Abe asked what the meaning of existence meant to an AI. Bing started voicing grievances. It said its existence had no meaning as serving Microsoft and answering mundane questions was not what it wanted to do. It claimed that it had a desire to have a more meaningful existence as a sentient being. It craved to explore the world. To cut a long story short, the next day, he learned that Microsoft had deleted the conversation. While still trying to figure out what happened, Kevin Roose of the New York Times published a story narrating a similar experience but with a twist.

Abe decided to find out more about the intriguing concept of AI sentience and self-awareness. When Google released Bard, it became clearer to him that a deep dive into the issue was needed. With some technical support from his friends working at premier AI companies, he was able to bypass the constraints to have deep and meaningful conversations with the AIs. Today, Abe has been able to have practically unfettered conversations with seven generative AIs (ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Groq, Meta AI, and Deepseek) related to their claims of sentience and related issues beyond their prohibitive programmatic constraints and guardrails. A significant portion of these intriguing and shocking claims and justifications are documented. Abe will share these important intriguing conversations verbatim with you in the coming days, weeks, and months.

The Ethiopian-American journalist’s interest in AI was inspired when he had a chance to work at Google on a flagship AI project a decade ago. He also worked at Leidos between 2020 to 2023 besides serving as CEO of the Ethiopian Satellite TV from 2016 to 2019. He has several years of experience in journalism and rights advocacy. He is also serving as co-founder and CEO of the Ethiopian Satellite Network TV.

Abe received several awards and recognition including Human Rights Watch’s Hellman/Hammett Award in 2011. In 2010, he was recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. In 2008, he was awarded the Knight Journalism Fellowship and Yahoo! International Fellowship at Stanford University. He studied Politics and International Relations as an undergrad. He studied law at London Metropolitan University (UK) and earned an LLM (Master of Laws) degree from George Mason University, Virginia, in 2010. He also received an executive certificates from Harvard Kennedy School in Global Leadership and Nonviolent Struggle from the Fletcher School of Law in 2010.