This is why the theory of us 'just' being a bag of atoms doesn't add up. This theory doesn't differentiate 'us' from a furniture where we easily dismiss it's intelligence.
For example computers have been processing information for decades now, but only recently they have been almost-successfully accused of having (artificial) intelligence.
Intelligence was applied while writing the programs which process information (outside or before system even boots up), not while executing those programs.
Its only now with LLMs (and agents based on LLMs) we are noticing that systems can do intent extraction, intent management, and ReAct to it.