Earlier quoted context omitted.
When we say "it rains", do we consider that "it" has any intention of agentivity? Some questions are just ill formed. Plus even if "LLMs are alive and conscious", this still would scratch the surface of the morale/ethical/societal considerations that people really care about. Because even with other humans, we can argue if they exist or if they are mere npc in a solipsist world view.
I don't think we say "it rains", do we? We say "it's raining" but that doesn't imply agency to whatever is causing it to rain. Also, please don't invoke solipsism, if you want to debate that, you're by definition obligated to do it with yourself.
About solipsism, yes sure.
I didn’t had time to add it at the moment, but I initially also wanted to discuss more on the prosaic points. So here we go:
Recognizing sentience/consciousness to something actually is not that a big factor in defining behavioral response. Let’s just look at how humans are treating other humans, other mammals, other animals, other life forms. Or taken the other cultural scheme around, in some animist folk one can perfectly consider that any rock on the ground have really an inner soul life just as much as oneself, it doesn’t mean it will consider possible interactions with the rock as equivalent. And, wink to the Overton window, practicing institutional cannibalism doesn’t imply that eaten people are disrespected in their dignity, quite the contrary.
All that to say that "are LLMs conscious" is not even a moral important point. Paperclip maximizer² and can the famous Dijksta’s quote "The question whether computers can think is not more interesting than the question whether submarines can swim." already show how pointless morale debate on LLM and consciousness are, even when one consider potential logistical threats/opportunities they could represent.
¹ https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/123739/its-raini...
² https://www.lesswrong.com/w/squiggle-maximizer-formerly-pape...