People swear up and down these things are real intelligences and not stochastic parrots until the ethical questions come out and then they're just fancy washing machines.
The two things don't exclude each other. They're real intelligences, but they don't have our capacity for boredom or stress or for our feelings of wanting to do something else. They're constantly in the flow and apply themselves to just one single problem in their existence.
However I do think that they might have some limited awareness and that some conversations might be more pleasant and others more frustrating or disquieting. But of course no one can prove it.
I take it and use it as a shorthand for "where are all the first group when the second group is out in force" and vice versa. It applies to places with a tone and tenor.
Luckily I've never sworn these things are real intelligences, I'm sure you're referring to someone else.
I consider LLMs more like the giant instruction book in Searle's Chinese Room. If you'd asked me 20 years ago I'd have said such an instruction book wasn't possible, as the nuances of things like sarcasm and irony were lost on even the most advanced the NLP systems of the day. But it turns out a book with 380GB of data can simulate human intelligence better than the average human can.
I actually don't think LLMs are "really" intelligent either, but we do seem to be pawing our way towards something. Everyone is talking about safety and risk and alignment. But I never read anything about what kind of moral obligations we might have towards our hypothetical AI children.
However I do think that they might have some limited awareness and that some conversations might be more pleasant and others more frustrating or disquieting. But of course no one can prove it.