> You're just assuming that mimicry of a thing is not equivalent to the thing itself.

I'm not assuming that, that's literally the definition of mimicry: to imitate closely.

You might say I'm assuming that it is mimicking and not actually thinking, but there's no evidence it's actually thinking, and we know exactly what is IS doing because we created the code that we used to build the model. They're not thinking, it's doing math, mathematical transformations of data.

But a simulated mind is not a mind. This was already debated years ago with the aid of the Chinese Room thought experiment.