That point is stated explicitly in the piece. Essentially, we can't know that even other humans are conscious. But we can look at behaviors that we all engage in, and the functions that our substrates perform. And when you do, having a graduated view of intelligence capacity emerges rather than a strict, on/off switch.

"What it's like" is the basis of minds.

> Nobody really knows for sure whether AIs are concious.

when we ask an AI to describe its experience of its experience, it responds that it doesn't have consciousness or self-awareness.

it could be lying of course, but I take it at its word. if you believe it is lying, then you have bigger problems to deal with.

Being able to make statistically relevant references to words is abstract token shuffling. One could say that humans are doing that also, but we also have countless cellular interactions and confirmations that LLMs don't engage in. Minds are things bodies do, not software that can be transported elsewhere.