By "sentience," what are you referring to, Sabine? The first result on Merrian Websmaster reads, "capable of sensing or feeling: conscious of or responsive to the sensations of seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, or smelling."

Seeing as A.I. is no more than the equivalent of a head on a stick, how can it sense? How can it feel?

A.I. can report sensing and feeling referencing off written accounts of organisms that can—and because so few of us understand the nuance of our phenomenological experience, we will convince ourselves it knows what it says—but it hasn't the necessary instruments to receive, metabolise, or send such signals!

In Feeling & Knowing, Antonio Damasio likens such to a recipe: it's important to acknowledge the speed and breadth with which this technology allows an exotic recipe can be compiled, but it hasn't the capacity to taste the final dish.

"Recipes are helpful, of course," he writes, "but recipes are not the same thing as the recipes are meant to help you reach."

A.I. is proving to be an incredible technology, but thanks to our collective wisdom, we seem to be fooling ourselves into believing it possesses qualities above its station. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that, without words, A.I. ceases to be anything at all.