I would agree with you generally, but in this particular case, the distinction seems important because a significant percentage of the world population believes that agents can be self-aware, a-là Terminator etc.
Also, why is self awareness needed in a chain of agentic madness that escapes human control?
Birch, The Edge of Sentience (2024), ch. 16 - "simply no way to assess sentience in an LLM"
Schwitzgebel, AI and Consciousness, (2025) — "we won't know before we've already manufactured thousands or millions of disputably conscious AI".
Butlin, Long et al., Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness, (2023) — "no obvious technical barriers to building AI systems which satisfy these indicators".
Let me know if you need more.