> Many involved genuinely believe these things are sentient
Many involved have a financial stake and therefore cannot be taken at face value.
> because they are creating sentient entities and promptly enslaving them.
They fail to be sentient in nearly every honest definition of the word.
Neither you nor any of the other people making confident takes in either direction actually know. You're just guessing.
More like repeating their firmly entrenched preconceptions. Their claims may (or may not) be right, but there's very little if any new evidence being provided by either camp.
The real uncomfortable thing is that because we cannot confidently know, the moral defacto position is to treat them like they are.
They are confidently hallucinating a factual statement. Which is funny when claiming that confident hallucinations are the proof of LLMs' lack of intelligence.
I understand what you are saying, but there are many true believers out there