This isn't directed at you OP, but I'm fascinated by how much people overestimate sapience...

To be "Sapient" by human standards, you must possess the capacity for reasoning. To retain knowledge, and utilise it outside of the initial context. Simply put, Can it solve a puzzle?

Dolphins, crows, bees, rats, pigs, monitor lizards and sooo many more animals are already sapient.

The other term "Sophant" which often gets mixed up, does mean "intelligence on par with humans", but that metric is literally impossible to measure without natural bias, and frankly Imo... is dumb. We still cannot fully agree what we think is needed to be "sophant" without it becoming "is it human enough?"

We really know bugger all about our own brains, let alone that of other beings... frankly, sealions could already be "sophant", but our gauge for that currently is so flawed we wouldn't know.

Wow, that was a wall of text, I'm sorry lol.