While like yourself I believe that sentience isn’t well enough defined to test for its presence or absence, I also believe that chatbots necessarily have to be good at convincing whoever interacts with them that they are sentient as the ultimate goal is to pass the imitation game, so “know it when I see it” isn’t even enough.

But it’s important we figure out what we mean by “sentience” sooner rather than later:

https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2022/06/18/lamda-turin...