That’s about my thought if a program became actually sentient then yes turning it off would be awful. Plus obviously the first sentient artificial life form who knows if it’d happen again. I guess it could be debated if it was a simulation and tons were sentient and had no life outside of such.

I still go with my first answer though, any sentient life observed outside natural biology would be a huge thing. I’d still want to give it a limited sandbox to work with so didn’t go all Hal or Deus Ex to achieve some random goal that wasn’t apparent. Least for awhile.