I strongly doubt that LaMDA is sentient, but do think it demonstrates the increasing ability of AI to fool people in conversations. For a point of reference, people might want to read about IBM's Project Debater (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/an-ibm-ai-debates...), if they don't already know about it.

And I don't think a fully sentient computer system that does whatever it wants to do would be a good idea. What would be more useful is that such a system is a great assistant that does what you ask of it. Its "intelligence", would be something that is confined to the task assigned to it.