Artificial Intelligence and Sentience: A Study of Holli Mintzer's Short Story "Tomorrow is waiting"

Abstract: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has gained prominence globally due to its ability to ease human effort. Artificial intelligence is the intelligence exhibited by machines to accomplish goals ascribed by humans. Today popular search engines, creative tools and video games display the power of artificial intelligence. With this unprecedented development comes the question if artificial intelligence would supplant human beings. Among diverse aspects, sentience is a parameter generally attributed to humans and regarded as a differentiator between humans and artificial intelligence. However, with the rapid advancement in artificial intelligence, literature has started to represent the pros and cons of Artificial Intelligence. Holli Mintzer’s short story “Tomorrow is Waiting” offers relevant insights to address a futuristic world where Anji, the protagonist, might have accidentally created a sentient machine. This paper aims to understand the repercussions of sentience in machines by closely reading the short story. It seeks to understand the implications of science fiction AI narratives.