Sure, but we also don't understand what's "going on" with interacting neurons in our brain giving rise to our intelligent experience.
The other sentence is just a strawman you constructed for yourself.
I did not construct anything. There are comments in this discussion suggesting it will happen. I just happen to agree, it will probably happen. We are easily fooled into seeing sentience where there is no evidence it exists, merely because it looks convincing. And then hand-wave it away saying (paraphrasing) "well, if it looks good enough, what's the difference?"
You basically accused the GP of saying that these machines were Gods.
"Sentience" is a word game, the GP said emergent intelligence [likely also a word game].