There's been a lot of discussion about the nature of machine consciousness lately. I've had a lot of conversations on this which have gone something like:
"An LLM can't be conscious because it doesn't have a body."
"Well no because it's only perceiving sensory data from that body as text."
"Okay if we reformat its input data to something else could it be conscious?"
"No because [new thing]..."
What I've found if you continue down that chain long enough, is that you eventually get to the point where it's clear that consciousness can be known, but not measured. There is no way to describe what would need to be built to replicate consciousness, because it's not something which can be built. I think it's because the true defining factor for consciousness, according to this view, is its origin and not its nature.
Something like:
No matter what robot/chip/model architecture you build, even if it's structurally identical in every measurable sense to a human body and brain, it's still not "truly conscious", because it didn't originate from a meatbrain.
Compare that to:
No matter what you brew, even if it's molecularly identical in every sense to a bottle of champagne, it's still just prosecco or sparkling wine, because it didn't originate from a region of France.
Despite being physically identical, the champagne vs prosecco distinction does actually matter for the purposes of status signalling and branding. People will pay a premium for champagne. Ordering a champagne has a certain "vibe" to it that ordering a prosecco simply never will. Sure you might not be able to taste the difference in a blind test, but that doesn't change the fact that champagne just feels fancier.