I'd say that in terms of evidence I'd want to establish specific functional criteria that seem related to consciousness and then try to establish those criteria existing in agents. If we can do so, then they're conscious. My layman understanding is that they don't really come close to some of the fairly fundamental assumptions.
Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of frameworks for this that have already been applied to LLMs.
Even fungi demonstrate “different communication behaviors when under resource constraint”, for example.
What we anthropomorphize is one thing, but demonstrable patterns of behavior are another.
Sometimes the whole animal kingdom, sometimes all living organisms, depending on context. Like, I would rather not harm a mosquito, but if it’s in my house I will feel no remorse for killing it.
LLMs, or any other artificial “life”, I simply do not and will not care about, even though I accept that to some extent my entire consciousness can be simulated neuron by neuron in a large enough computer. Fuck that guy, tbh.