To those posting opinionated comments or answers (i.e. not factual research), please first describe your perspective of sentience and artificially intelligent machines - this is not the same as their definitions. Because this question is broad, abstract, and actively debated, readers have their own beliefs of what these terms should mean.
I was reading the Wikipedia article on a philosophical zombie:
[A philosophical zombie] is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience. When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain though it behaves exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say "ouch" and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain).
…
[Philosophical zombies] think they are conscious, think they have qualia, think they suffer pains – they are just 'wrong' (according to this lamentable tradition), in ways that neither they nor we could ever discover.
The excerpt above describes my perspective of what I believe it means for something to be psuedo-sentient (not a real term). It seems to me that an artificial machine (constructed as modern computer programs are constructed, processing instructions sequentially with the ability to conditionally branch its execution) would not be capable of surpassing this quality of psuedo-sentience. What research has been done in this area and what are its answers?