We do not know if Claude is conscious, and we will almost certainly never know. Any strong claim either way is over confident.
It's the opposite, engineers do know. Claiming otherwise is way too generous and over confident.
I mean between this two "knowings" the Claude inner workings are much more clear for engineers, including many side effects, alternatives, custom shortcuts in processing etc. It's a magic only for people looking at it as black box
Fancypants autocomplete cannot be conscious. It's just echoing previous human experiences, which make it sound like a person. It is not a person. It is an algorithm. There is no mechanism by which it can obtain consciousness.
People believing otherwise are fools. People debating this are idiots. I realize these words are harsh, but it's the truth.
We do not know if rocks are conscious and we will almost certainly never know. After all, you can't prove a rock isn't conscious. We don't know what imbues matter with consciousness.