Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, an ant has signs of life yet you wouldn't call it sentient.
Why not? You're using a very bizzare conception of "sentience".
"AI" is a bit of a loaded word. It does tasks of human-level intelligence well. But as far as being self-aware, it probably scores worse than a car. It's remarkably tricky to measure, because it's trained to act intelligent and use human language, but it's still effectively an autocomplete machine.
An ant is fairly robotic as far as organisms go, but it's also quite self-aware. It can communicate danger or food, it withdraws from death and damage. It likely doesn't have a sense of self, though an ant hill may. Just as our cells don't have a self-identity, but the larger system does.