So let’s say an AI achieves sentience. It’s self-aware now and can make decisions about what it wants to do. Assuming a corporation created it, would it be a worker? It would be doing work and creating value for a capitalist.
Would it still be the means of production, since it is technically a machine, even if it has feelings and desires?
It can’t legally own anything, so I don’t see how it could be bourgeoisie.
Or would it fit a novel category?
Well if we talk about “sentience”, we have to consider what comes with it. Just because an AI reaches the same intelligence and self-awareness as humans, that doesn’t necessarily mean it also gains the same needs, desires and emotions. An AI fundamentally does not have the same needs as humans, it does not need the same kind of sustenance, sleep or shelter. Does gaining sentience come with the human desires for self-determination, self-actualization, companionship, social recognition etc.? Does an AI need to feel loved? Does an AI desire social status? Does an AI have a sense of dignity that can be hurt by degrading it? Humans have these emotional needs as a result of millennia of evolution as a social animal and a lot of them are in some way related to finding a mate and sexually reproducing, which is something that definitely does not apply to an AI.
Even if you assume that the first sentient AI is 100% modeled after human psychology and has all the same emotional needs including finding a romantic partner, its material needs are still radically different and therefore human class systems don’t really apply. An AI does not need physical food or water, it does not need sleep, it cannot experience physical exhaustion, it does not need shelter (i suppose it needs to be stored somewhere digitally), it does not physically age and so on and so forth.
Basically, I think you first have to define what a sentient AI would actually want and need.
Edit: Technically, if a corporation created a sentient AI tomorrow, that AI would be the corporation’s private property and therefore a straight-up slave. I guess that answers the question.