To me this is like deja-vu: Ethology started out with "don't anthropomorphize" which is correct, but people read that to mean that animals can't think. Each paper down the line showed that they CAN think, but that each species and even individual have their own ways of thinking.

We know that gorillas think and communicate. Many papers after Koko can tell you that much. Her skill (or lack thereof) at human communication is not quite the revelation that people think it is. Because she was a Gorilla.

Meanwhile some of the messaging from big AI companies is truly atrocious; let's admit it. People obviously want to push back, and that needn't be wrong. Here though, the instinct to push back threatens to veer into cargo-cult skepticism. I think the question of whether or not LLMs can or cannot have human consciousness is a category error. Because they're LLMs.