Aren't we inherently projecting feelings onto anything that isn't inside our own direct experience? There is no way to confirm any alleged sentience outside of your own "feelings" is not an automaton, including other humans.

It depends what you mean by confirm.

You can raise the bar for confirmation so high that you cannot confirm that you even yourself are not an automation. And you can lower the bar so that other humans are considered sentient.

But in the end, it is only about arbitrary decision where to place the bar for confirmation.

How could we possibly ever test for "not feeling like an automaton?" The only possible test, it seems, is internal subjective experience. Even if something reported this, how would you ever verify it?

Well ultimately, yes.

Our brains are trapped inside a box of bone and only know what we simulate from our vision that is itself mostly 'upscaled' and milliseconds behind 'real time' as well as our other senses.

We take a LOT on faith and our systems are so flawed that magicians exist !!

It's amazing we can do anything.

Yep, I'm convinced that cars are designed to have human-like faces, even if not consciously.

It almost has to be, that's why small shopping cars (Twingo?) look "happy", cool BMWs look angry, aggressive.

I would rather say animal-like but I'm sure these are conscious choices.

At least with the 2000 Jaguar XKR (cat) or the 2000 Camaro (catfish).