Why Are Tech Bros So Desperate to Say AI Is Sentient?

It’s not because they’re over-excited about new technology. Follow the money.

Mark St. Cyr | October 11, 2026

When it comes to Silicon Valley tech bros, I’ve learned over the years that there’s one thing they care about over all else: protecting their net worth.

Sure, there have been some absolutely fantastic and modern marvels stemming from this land. But there has always been one underlying principle to help enforce my assertion, one that far too many seem oblivious to when the good times are represented solely by skyrocketing share values and IPO dreams: They’ll do, say, imply, implore, obfuscate, whatever it takes to preserve said net worth.  Everything else be damned.

This is an overgeneralization, painted with a mighty broad brush.  Yet it really isn’t that far off the mark when you look back on past experiences.  Do I need to remind anyone about NFTs (non-fungible tokens) as just one example?

Today we have A.I., which seems to have broken the prior latest and greatest tech story (Bitcoin).

Does anyone not remember, just about a year or so ago, when everyone seemingly involved in the crypto story suddenly was screaming to high heaven about how the government needed to get involved when it was supposedly created for the exact opposite stance?  To the moon! was all one heard on a daily basis as this argument was stated in various ways, each more boisterous than the next.

Then, when said regulatory provisioning failed to appear, as Bill Murray said in that famous opening scene in Stripes, “depression set in.”

Bitcoin has nosedived, and it never recovered in........

© American Thinker