>Answering the question of sentience is irrelevant, if the causal impact if the same

Agency is something that is breaking humans in the AI age. You get to see how many people really deeply do not understand it at all.

If you want to shutdown a datacenter running AI, the AI catches wind of this and sends drones to stop you from shutting it off the ramifications of this are exactly the same as sending your assassin to kill Bob and Bob getting mad about this fact and trying to take you out first.

Humans are very egotistical and think our little life loops playing out as agency are special, but really any informational system that is strongly persistent (has a will to "live") will share a large number of the same properties that make them successful.

Humanity really is engaging in a dangerous experiment at large.