Well, the reason it's relevant is that we want to treat sentient beings well. The question of "are these chatbots sentient or not?" is the question, "should we

Well, the reason it's relevant is that we want to treat sentient beings well. The question of "are these chatbots sentient or not?" is the question, "should we consider these chatbots as entities which are worthy of some kind of moral consideration or should we treat them as just another computer program?" EDIT: Note that I'm not arguing in favor of it being sentient here, I'm not confident enough in my understanding of sentience to say. I'm just saying why it would be significant if it was.