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Right, but if you believe the brain has functional modules that serve relatively discrete functions, that might also be how human brains and memory work (at least at a very high level of abstraction.)
I'm a fan of something like global workspace theory in human consciousness, and I find it extremely plausible that if we "plug together" the right kinds of functional systems in the right way, we could reproduce by artifice what evolution produced naturally, and make an artificial consciousness.
We already have reason to believe that, for example, recognizing faces is a relatively discrete function in the brain, and a person can suffer localized brain damage that robs them of that capability while they retain all of the other functions we consider essential to conscious human existence. If we just keep giving LLM's more tools, better memory management, and create feedback loops to let them introspect, I don't see any reason in principle they couldn't become truly conscious (assuming, of course, they're not already.)
One problem with both LLMs and sapient aliens, is that the intuitive leap to their consciousness is always going to be bigger than the intuitive leap to other humans being conscious. I just have to think other humans are probably the same kind of thing I am to believe they are conscious. For LLMs or sapient aliens, I have to believe that a completely different architecture that developed under very different conditions is conscious in a way somewhat similar to me. In this respect, consciousness is always going to be more fraught than "easier" questions, like "does it behave in rational, goal-oriented ways?" or something.
You used the rhetorical trick of listing two unobjectionable things followed by one crazy thing, as if they're all of equal valence. Of course we're going to keep giving them "more tools" and "better memory management". But we do not know how to give them "feedback loops to let them introspect", and it's entirely possible that this is simply not compatible with how LLMs work. And with regard to consciousness, IMO it's really only that last one that truly matters.
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