Billions * billions of pipes and valves can result in emergent behavior that appears conscious while at the same time the sound of a single independent water pipe can moan and sound like human speech or otherwise lifelike and evoke human emotions.
I think LLMs are doing both of these things and often people are more impressed by the independent fixtures (the moan) rather than the emergent behavior. Both the sound and the emergent behavior can be built on purpose or on accident.
I think it helps to look at this through an Information Theory lens. What information is coming into the system (the human or the machine)? What information goes out of the system which is novel? How much of this can be attributed to attempting to parse random noise aka. `Random_Imagination_Engine` vs something else? The number of inventors who come up with a breakthrough idea after mis-hearing someone is surprisingly high.
If we make the distinction between phenomenal consciousness from access consciousness we can see that LLMs clearly can make decisions based on input (A-Consciousness) but they probably don't have raw feelings and sensations (P-Consciousness).