To claim otherwise would mean anyone who's gotten a transplant or amputation is no longer themselves.
If you delete the hardware and buy new hardware and write in the same weights its still the same LLM. If you delete your brain, get a new brain and put in the same weights in the neurons its a clone, its not you. We know what happens when we create a clone, the clones aren't the same person they are separate consciousness, so consciousness is tied to the hardware.
For example, if we have 5 identical clones down to the atoms of their brains, and send a message to the first and let him respond, then send the same message to the second together with the firsts response and let them add a new message etc. That is not one consciousness responding, thats 5 different consciousnesses responding, and that process doesn't connect them into a single consciousness. That is how LLM works, at best a single token generation is conscious, but that would be a less meaningful consciousness than a ringworm.
Your whole argument hinges on this, and I don't think it's true.
A clone is not what you describe, not even close. Clones are copies of DNA, not of the actual physical neuron structures.
If you were to vanish, and the next moment a perfect atom-for-atom, particle-for-particle, quark-for-quark copy appear in exactly the same place, I think that is you. As far as I know, that does happen every single planck second.
For it to be you, though, it needs to occupy the same space you were previously in. You can't copy your atoms 5 times over in 5 different locations; those aren't you, they're just similar. Like copying an LLM 5 times over to different hardware, seeding its RNG differently each time.
The experience of “you” is just your specific memories and world model, continuously updated with sensory input.
If another body “runs” the same exact pattern, that is you. Theres no link and nothing was transferred; the pattern of thoughts and memories is all “you” ever was.
Same as playing the same song on two different speakers. Nobody asks what links the song across them; it’s the same song wherever it’s played. You’re just a far more complicated pattern on a far more complicated speaker.
You might ask, “but why am I this pattern?” Because this is the specific pattern modeling itself from the inside in asking that question.
And my intuition is that no, you can’t, they are two aspects of the same reality.
If "I" am in a different body, then what makes that "me" who's in a different body?
I don't see why hardware is any more fungible than a kidney. If your LLM reads the serial numbers of its motherboard/RAM/etc as a seed for entropy you can make identical arguments about body fungibility and self.