Artificial-intelligence systems such as large language models (LLMs) can exhibit behaviour that seems strikingly intelligent. This has led many people, including some experts, to wonder whether these systems could have some form of consciousness — the capacity for subjective experience. However, we think that existing AI systems are not conscious, and that, along current trajectories of development, they are not likely to become conscious. Greater clarity about whether AI could become consciousness will be crucial as society grapples with the challenges posed by this increasingly powerful technology.
AIs are almost certainly not conscious but it been a computer is not an argument against consciousness. There’s no reason to believe that you need biological material for consciousness.
After all humans are primarily made of carbon which itself demonstrably does not think. It’s the structure that’s important and a fair argument could be made to say that the structure of a brain is replicated in software in an AI and therefore the medium isn’t relevant to the question.
We don’t even know this.