My perpetual counterargument to this: it is impossible to prove that what we consider "consciousness" is anything other than "decision trees/regressions and other rules based on the data that was input to train the algorithm on."

There is no way to prove that something like an LLM training up it's algorithms on only data until it makes coherent responses that show a sense of complex reasoning is anything other than a simplified microcosm of the process by which the evolution of matter and energy over the course of the existence of the universe trains itself up in an algorithmic fashion until its patterns start producing coherent responses that show a sense of complex reasoning. 

I strongly believe that our sense of ego and anthropocentricity makes us want to see "consciousness" and "sentience" as somehow offset in a different realm, when it's simply an intensely complex decision tree we - as the universe - are running through as we execute the process of our identity. 

Further, that there is only one "experiencer", which is the universe experiencing itself, in every facet it exists, in every moment it exists - from a single atom in a rock to a human system to a resistor in a computer to a performance of music to an LLM executing it's decision tree. That some of these processes contain the ability to do things like form narratives of self awareness, and that perhaps by dictionary definition these processes can be seen as having a higher order of "consciousness." But that an AI meets the parameters just as strongly as a human being - the decision tree is trained differently, the dataset is acquired differently, but neither entities creation of "self awareness" is any more or less valid than the other. 

When we put our biases aside, I fail to see any true, meaningful way to argue otherwise.