As far as I know, there isn't that much funding or research in EA on AI sentience (though there is some? e.g. this)
I can imagine some answers:
- Very intractable
- Alignment is more immediately the core challenge, and widening the focus isn't useful
- Funders have a working view that additional research is unlikely to affect (e.g. that AIs will eventually be sentient?)
- Longtermist focus is on AI as an X-risk, and the main framing there is on avoiding humans being wiped out
But it also seems important and action-relevant:
- Current framing of AI safety is about aligning with humanity, but making AI go well for AI's could be comparably / more important
- Naively, if we knew AIs would be sentient, it might make 'prioritising AIs welfare in AI development' a much higher impact focus area
- It's an example of an area that won't necessarily attract resources / attention from commercial sources
(I'm not at all familiar with the area of AI sentience and posted without much googling, so please excuse any naivety in the question!)