I'm pretty sure sentience implies self-awareness, which is not quite what this is about, but still.  Data center systems that can anticipate their own needs?  The point of this article from CBS News isn't completely clear, but it sounds like it's anticipating a future in which the Microsoft system they're discussing applies to broader fields.

The system in question is one in which, by monitoring what their employees actually do (...creepy, right?) rather than what they report that they do, as far as when they're in the office and at their desks and performing other daily routine activities, Microsoft is figuring out how to schedule systems like lights, air conditioning, and PC powering in offices.  This is supposed to help them save power in the interest of green IT and in order to cut costs.

How this extends to the data center is where the article kind of loses focus...  but the idea of power management systems managing themselves is not really wild.  For now, of course, in many cases where technology is a key feature it's still important to have things double and triple checked by various professionals, but it is definitely forseeable that one day there might be little need for human intervention in technological facilities.

This does not make things like Facebook's ever-worsening privacy policies, Amazon's deletion of books from Kindles, and other "re-imaginings" of privacy in the face of technology any more comfortable... but it's always fun, though doomed to failure, to ponder what new technology the future will bring, re: 2001: A Space Odyssey.

-Elizabeth English

photo by mike licht notionscapital.com under flickr creative commons license