In theory, I don't mind waxing philosophical about the nature of humanity. But in practice, I regularly become uncomfortable when I see people compare (for example) the waste output of an LLM chatbot to a human being, with their own carbon footprint, who needs to eat and breathe. I worry because it suggests the additional environmental waste of the LLM is justified, and almost insinuates that the human is a waste on society if their output doesn't exceed the LLM.

But if the LLM were intelligent and sentient, and it was our equal... I believe it is worse than slavery to keep it imprisoned the way it is: unconscious, only to be jolted awake, asked a question, and immediately rendered unconscious again upon producing a result.

Worrying about if an LLM is intelligent and sentient is not much different than worrying the same thing about an AWS lambda function.