[jameshart]

It remembers what it has said and what is said to it. It changes its internal state to select different responses in the future based on those experiences.

Subjectively, I'm not sure I would claim that I do anything more than that, and I'm pretty sure I'm sentient.

Just because it's not running in between REPLs doesn't seem like enough to dismiss it. If you want to, you could just update it with no input once every second. Its internal state will mutate, as it processes on what it's said and the lack of input it's receiving. Perhaps when you finally send it some actual input, its response will reflect what it processed during the pause. Maybe it will be bored, or annoyed that you left it alone.