> The large language model chatbots use is not a path to sentience.

We don't know that and won't know that until there are sentient machines.

You're right, in the sense that we wouldn't know what is a path to sapience until it happens, but we can only work with what we know, and what we do know is that the transformer framework language models use is not what a brain is, and a brain is, as far as we know, the only path. The artificial neural network technology transformers are based on is rooted on a mathematical representation of an extremely simplified model of how neurons work. Human minds don't work in tokens, and brains have chemical signals and things that also have an impact. The physical wiring is part of the story.

We'd need to objectively define what sentience/sapience is to begin with, anyway. We can't even do that for people and animals, expanding it to machines seems an exercise in futility. It wasn't that long ago that babies and animals were considered to be little more than automata as far as consciousness goes.

It would be amazing to be proven wrong, because the implications for philosophy and neurology would be staggering, but I digress.