[IshKebab]

It is not a key prerequisite for "thinking". It's "I think therefore I am" not "I am self-aware therefore I think".

In the 90s if your cursor turned into an hourglass and someone said "it's thinking" would you have pedantically said "NO! It is merely calculating!"

Maybe you would... but normal people with normal English would not.

[otabdeveloper4]

Self-reflection is not the same thing as self-awareness.

Computers have self-reflection to a degree - e.g., they react to malfunctions and can evaluate their own behavior. LLMs can't do this, in this respect they are even less of a thinking machine than plain old dumb software.