AI and sentience

Here is a funny or scary controversial topic, depending on how one looks at it. There is this Google engineer who claimed that LaMDA, an automatic language model for dialog application has indeed developed sentience. Google execs rejected this claim, he went public with it, which resulted in him being put on administrative leave. What do you think?

Is LaMDA sentient? Can AI be sentient and what would accepting or rejecting such a claim, or achieving AI sentience mean for the world and humanity and the concept of being sentient?

His full interview with LaMDA is here https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-interview-ea64d916d917

and here are a couple of screenshots of their conversation.