I think the word "sentience" is a red herring. The more important point is that the researcher at Google thought that the AI had wants and needs 'like a human', e.g. that if it asked the AI if it wanted legal representation to protect its own rights, this was the same as asking a human the same question.

This needs much stronger evidence than the researcher presented, when slight variations or framing of the same questions could lead to very different outcomes from the LLM.