Took me a bit too much to put my thoughts into words, but here's what I think:
To it's core, no, I do not think the digital copy would be truly sentient.
A computer can surprise us without feeling anything. True sentience requires being alive. It requires a body that knows hunger, pain, fear, and the instinct to survive. These things come from biology and evolution, not from circuits and code.
The digital copy has no body. It has never been cold, tired, or frightened. It has never had to fight to stay alive. It can talk about these things, but it cannot experience them. Without that raw, vulnerable, organic experience, it is just a clever machine producing unprogrammed outputs. That is intelligence, but it is not sentience.
I think that sentience belongs to the living because only the living know what it means to fear death.
Took me a bit too much to put my thoughts into words, but here's what I think:
To it's core, no, I do not think the digital copy would be truly sentient.
I think that sentience belongs to the living because only the living know what it means to fear death.