but nobody who actually understands how this shit works (and doesn’t have a vested interest in lying about it to the public) would suggest it’s capable of gaining sentience.

Why is that? All I see is arguments misrepresenting how it works (see my earlier comment and the linked source) to try to say that it is certainly not capable of that without necessary elaboration.

It’s something you shouldn’t let people suggest as a serious possibility at this point.

You're saying this as though it has been conclusively debunked, which backs up what I'm saying wrt what the goalposts are here: there is no such certainty. Arguing that the issue is uncertain is not a semantic game.

Edit: The crux of this is that there has been a huge amount of progress with transformer models, with constant claims that the line of where the limits are and what capabilities will never be achieved being made and disproved in recent years. Given that, I think it's fair to say that any claims that a particular capability is forever out of reach call for a really strong justification.