Really the Thomason article is emblematic of the problem. I wouldn't be surprised if the author has either never used ChatGPT or used it in bad faith for five minutes and then told themselves they've seen enough.
Is the insinuation here that if the author had more personal experience with ChatGPT they would consider it more capable of sapience? It is precisely because the illusion of sapience is so robust that we need reminding of the statistical algorithm driving the model. There's no personality, no judgment, no awareness. When exactly would this awareness happen, or how is it represented in the state of the data? The LLM has its training and the conversation context, and that is enough to produce everything that you see. If, through experience, we talk ourselves into thinking it must be something more, we are engaging in something like "ChatGPT Psychosis."
I'm at a loss for how you read rudeness, superiority, bad faith, or deceit in my comment. It was an earnest question based on my understanding of LLMs, which I recognize is limited. I was trying to frame the problem as I understand it as a software developer. LLMs are still software, which makes it useful to think about the inputs, outputs, and state of the data in concrete terms. The way I asked it was an attempt to find out what I'm missing and/or highlight the issues that I see in your post.
I'm new to this forum, and it seems like there is a consensus here that LLM-based intelligence has a level of sophistication that goes far beyond what I think is reasonable to assume and is overly anthropomorphic. I think it is an important aspect that still needs to be understood better and explored. If it is possible to discuss without reading bad faith into every little part, I'm eager to. Otherwise I'm also happy to move on.