> I've literally not met one person in tech who thinks LLMs will become sentient or conscious. But I always see people online claiming that there are lots of people who believe that.

I haven't met him, but a famous (pre-ChatGPT) counterexample is Blake Lemoine:

> In June 2022, LaMDA gained widespread attention when Google engineer Blake Lemoine made claims that the chatbot had become sentient. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaMDA).

It's also not uncommon here to see someone respond to a comment questioning the consciousness or sentience of LLMs with the question along the lines of "how do you know anyone is conscious/sentient?" They're not being direct with their beliefs (I believe as a kind of motte and bailey tactic), but the implication is they think LLM are sentient and bristle when someone suggests otherwise.