I doubt most people want their machines to think, or feel, on any familiar level.
But how would we know if it is sentient or not? We now so little about the brain and how it really works.. Besides, we wouldn't really be able to tell wether the thing had independent thoughts, if it wasn't able to communicate/convey them through it's artificial body.
Maybe all a proto-consciousness needs is a fraction of the actual neurons in a brain (seeing as a large part of them are there to control the body).. Or it could be that the mind is too dependent on a body (or at the very least a biological construct which is different than a brain) for it to function on an independent level.. This was the idea I was tossing around.