In short, it's the "mind's 'I'" - we think not as response to external stimuli (only) such as prompts, but we have an inner "I" that asks questions on its own initiative. There are people like Douglas R. Hofstadter, who believe consciousness is not linked to human hardware (the brain), but that it is an epiphenomenon that emerges as a result of sufficient complexity of the underlying system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I

I believe that while underlying high complexity is certainly logically necessary for consciousness, but it is not logically sufficient, and I am undecided (slightly "pro" intuitively) on the question of separability of consciousness from its hardware.

Will a LLM ask an original question on day? I doubt it.

Note that AI models do not have to be conscious to be useful (or to take away millions of jobs)!