Let's be serious, it's not like AI companies haven't fed into this misunderstanding. CEOs of these companies love to muse about the possibility that an LLM is conscious.

I presume wasps are conscious. I still don't trust wasps.

Is that how you approach debugging? :)

Yeah, it's unfortunately part of the hype. Talking about how close you are to having a truly general AI is just a way to generate buzz (and ideally investor dollars).