The bit about that that's bothering me is "sapient" is a term of art -- it's science fiction shorthand employed with a purpose (it denotes personhood for the reader, in a field where blatantly-nonhuman but unambiguously-personlike entities are common). It divides the field of hypothetical entities into two neat, clean categories: people no matter what their substrate, appearance, anatomy or drives, and everything from animals of every sort to plants and grains of sand.

It just seems like a weird way of dividing up the world, and more of a cultural artefact than anything; a marker on the map which corresponds to nothing in the territory.