I tend to use 'sentience' to separate animal-like things which can sense their environment from plant-like things which can't; and 'sapience' to separate human-like things which can think abstractly from critter-like things which can't. At the least, that's the approach that was in the back of my mind as I wrote the initial post. By these definitions, a paperclipper AI would have to be both sentient, in order to be sufficiently aware of its environment to create paperclips, and sapient, to think of ways to do so.
If I may ask, what quality are you describing with the word 'sentience'?
Probably the same thing people mean when they say "consciousness". At least, that's the common usage I've seen.
Thought experiment:
Through whatever accident of history underlies these philosophical dilemmas, you are faced with a choice between two, and only two, mutually exclusive options:
* Choose A, and all life and sapience in the solar system (and presumably the universe), save for a sapient paperclipping AI, dies.
* Choose B, and all life and sapience in the solar system, including the paperclipping AI, dies.
Phrased another way: does the existence of any intelligence at all, even a paperclipper, have even the smallest amount of utility above no intelligence at all?
If anyone responds positively, subsequent questions would be which would be preferred, a paperclipper or a single bacteria; a paperclipper or a self-sustaining population of trilobites and their supporting ecology; a paperclipper or a self-sustaining population of australopithecines; and so forth, until the equivalent value is determined.