In other words, there's a higher level of sentience than our pitiful and primitive "organic" sentience, and that's ... the sentience of machines."Sentience is the next phase of universal organisation. First came primitive stars to turn simple molecules into complex ones, then came more complex stars with planetary systems, then came life, and finally sentience — first in primitive organic form, then advanced synthetic form." - Joel Shepherd
Which, as you know, there are many thousands of sentient organic beings right here on this planet who are working feverishly to develop artificial intelligence, also known as machine-based sentience.
So when we do find intelligent life on other planets, it may be a race - or a group of races - of fully sentient machines, whose intelligence might eclipse ours in unknown ways. And since they don't reproduce organically, there might could be a lot more of them than there are of us.