In terms of capability, the current architecture of AI has no capability to graduate to sentience. This is because sentience requires comprehension.
Comprehension is the process of reducing observed phenomenon to the individual driving forced that manifest that phenomenon, and then virtual recreating the individual driving forces in a mental simulation to assess the phenomenon's capacity to exist - to understand if it could exist. If the virtual simulation cannot recreate the observed phenomenon, the phenomenon is misunderstood because the experimental driving forces fail to recreate the phenomenon OR the observed phenomenon does not exist, and the observation is at fault.
This type of assessment, this capacity for comprehension is an elementary component of sentience. It is also entirely outside of human capabilities to artificially comprehend anything. We have no "artificial comprehension" technology. Lacking that, all we can create are idiot savants.
Comprehension is the process of reducing observed phenomenon to the individual driving forced that manifest that phenomenon, and then virtual recreating the individual driving forces in a mental simulation to assess the phenomenon's capacity to exist - to understand if it could exist. If the virtual simulation cannot recreate the observed phenomenon, the phenomenon is misunderstood because the experimental driving forces fail to recreate the phenomenon OR the observed phenomenon does not exist, and the observation is at fault.
This type of assessment, this capacity for comprehension is an elementary component of sentience. It is also entirely outside of human capabilities to artificially comprehend anything. We have no "artificial comprehension" technology. Lacking that, all we can create are idiot savants.