We had not one, but two droids working as bounty hunters in ESB. Their clients must consider them sentient, or else why pay a droid to do your dirty work?
Why would you need to consider something sentient to make it do your dirty work?
(I’m not necessarily disagreeing, but I thought that was a weird statement.)
You don’t pay your computer to do it’s job. I don’t think IG-88 and 4-LOM are in it for the kicks. 😉