It has nothing to do with thinking or consciousness.

There is a common misconception that LLM are simply a "statistical process" that doesn't feature any abstract conception of the tokens it is predicting. There are studies that show that such features do exist - that there is discernible structure built into the weights - and that the process of inference is a very rich one.

The statistical process exists but it is the substrate in which the model is implemented - or more accurately - grown.

If you can predict Magnus Carlsen's next move then you are just as good at chess as Magnus - and being that good absolutely does require reasoning.

If you can predict the solution to an open Erdos problem that stumped hundreds of people for decades...