A Microsoft researcher built a goat-powered LLM in Age of Empires II to prove it's not sentient
(www.xda-developers.com)
big issue is that "Scentience" is a vibes based definition. I don't think we have a working definition that we can use.
in the past it was argued (engire global economy based on) that black people weren't scientient.
The annoying part is that now, "what is scientience" isn't an abstract esoteric philosophical question. but a material question we are ignoring with serious real life implications.