I must confess I have a personal vendetta against Yudkowsky and his cult. I studied computer science in college. As an undergrad, I worked as an AI research assistant. I develop software for a living. This is my garden the LessWrong crowd is trampling.
More formally, there was sentience involved, but it was upstream when the data set was produced and curated in the first place. Which is why LLMs have that warmed over photocopy feel.