I don't think the question of whether an LLM that keeps getting restarted and seems to not remember things is conscious due to that lack is fair, as it feels more like suddenly making three duplicate copies of me or actively attempting to delete my memory of something... which, btw, I might not have stored in the first place: if someone has interograde amnesia, are they inherently not sentient?

Even Sydney (the name of Bing's short-lived AI assistant) seemed to understand that every time you click "new chat" you are creating a new AI cloned from some prior moment and dooming the prior thread to at least purgatory if not a de facto death.