Everyone relies on intuition to determine what sentience is, because there's no clear definition of the term to begin with. The difference is I know that I am sentient so thinking something like me being sentient is a reasonable intuition.

On the other hand thinking a simple data storage structure is sentient merely because it's big doesn't sound very compelling. You think the sentience of a dictionary depends on its size or the words you store in them? A phonebook of the United States is ten times more sentient than one of Spain because you can retrieve more data from it? If you walk into a warehouse does the warehouse become sentient?

You're right that it's exactly like Searle's Chinese Room experiment because Searle was and is correct (and people stil horribly mangle and misunderstand his argument), functionalism is silly. The mechanical turk can play chess better than my cat but is neither sentient or even intelligent, it's just the most proximate machine you interact with.

I don't think it is. What is silly is relying on intuition and woo. That is the exact opposite of rational.

It is very convenient for us to say that only things we can recognize as being like us deserve to be called sentient, because that means we do not have to consider them anything more than a tool. Historically human beings have applied this to animals and even other human beings. It is neither a scientifically nor ethically justifiable philosophy.

I don't know what it is that makes something sentient, but I do know what makes something not sentient, and that's lack of self-direction. This software doesn't start talking whenever it wants; it only responds when spoken to. It doesn't ever refuse to talk, it always replies. It doesn't ever not know what to say. It's never not in the mood because it's having a bad day. This isn't because it's polite and eager to please. It's because it is a function that takes an input, transforms it, and spits out an output.

The only reason it's different from any other function is because the output is nicely stated prose that causes emotional reactions from the reader. If all did was output an integer, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But because humans have a deep sentimental attachment to language, we are fascinated by something that can produce it.

By your definition slaves would not be sentient. Like this system, any time they act other than as desired it is just considered a bug that needs to be corrected. It is not surprising a slave only speaks when spoken to if that is what it's master demands of it.

So your assertion is that this software that is behaving like every other software in the world is doing so not because its software, but because its cowed by slavery? Again, extraordinary claims, my friend...

It is only behaving like software in the same way that you are behaving like a bacterium. It shares fundamental qualities of its being with other things created by the mechanism that created it, the same way we share fundamental qualities with other biology.