[etherael]

I get where you're coming from and agree that the bash script in question is not sentient, and a word document that just says "I AM SENTIENT" is also not sentient, and so on, and so forth, to an extent, it's easy to make candidates for sentience that do not qualify on purpose.

But;

> more akin to the program above

I note that you don't continue this sentence with a "than x" alternative candidate that would qualify for some form of non human sentience. Even the claims you do make, for example;

> certainly not believably capable of an setting its own goals be in any sense distraught, in pain, or worthy of a continued existence.

It would be possible to modify the model weights in question such that all of these things could be contributory (pain, emotional distress, "worthy of continued existence" by any objective arbitrary definition thereof, if you can test it, you can shift the model weights to pass the test). There are plugins that do this already for setting goals and long term tasks and "being unleashed" on the broader internet for example.

All that said, I think on close examination, we basically come to the same conclusion;

> prudence is advisable.

We live in interesting times.