The central point here is the presence of functional circuits in LLMs that act effectively on observable behavior just like emotions do in humans.

When you can't differentiate between two things, how are they not equal? People here want "things" that act exactly like human slaves but "somehow" aren't human.

To hide behind one's ignorance about the true nature of the internal state of what arguably could represent sentience is just hubris? The other way around, calling LLMs "stochastic parrots" without explicitly knowing how humans are any different is just deflection from that hubris? Greed is no justification for slavery.