No matter how large the llm hardware is it won’t be made of brain meat. The stuff we actually know is conscious.
There are some religious people who clutch at nonsense like quantum microtubules, but nobody has found anything real that would preclude pure computation from being conscious. (And yes that does have all sorts of mind-bending consequences.)
> I think I would say that the universe has a purpose, it's not somehow just there by chance ... some people, I think, take the view that the universe is just there and it runs along—it's a bit like it just sort of computes, and we happen somehow by accident to find ourselves in this thing. But I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe, I think that there is something much deeper about it.
Anyway I was more thinking of Hameroff who also seems to be .. maybe "spiritual" is a better word. He believes in quantum Buddhism or some nonsense like that.