> Who have you ever heard make a sincere, good faith argument that a toaster is conscious?
More than one, for many classes of devices, incl. toasters. Some were drunk, some were insane, and some were delusional.
LLMs are no different. They are automata, yet delusional people bring out pitchforks and torches when someone points out that they are just statistical models, and they don't even work when there's no input to them.
Which is very different than consciousness.
Their being statistical models and their being conscious are not contradictory unless proven otherwise. That's not knowledge, it is assumption.
It would appear to me you have no interest in a real, good faith discussion on this topic because you think anyone who disagrees with you is necessarily delusional. Which is a shame, and that's the kind of dogma you are criticizing.
This was exactly the point of the story, it's too uncomfortable to admit that we don't know what consciousness is and what is and isn't conscious, so we just brush it under the rug.