[jsimzeroone]

One precondition for sentience would be some kind of continuity. Does the AI operate separately from its tasks, or does it instantiate, take care of some request, and then end, as a ChatBot process does? Is it actively processing while waiting for input, or is it only alive and active when it is processing some input and preparing some output?

I think the lack of this continuity is why people who feel they know how ChatGPT works feel confident it is not sentient. Sentience isn't simply responding to stimuli -- although we don't really understand consciousness, it clearly involves some kind of continuing sense of self, some kind of "dial tone" that provides the basic sense of continuing existence, and that isn't there in a bot that simply takes input and builds a response based on rules and data.