I wonder how much of the whole "LLMs are conscious and we should be nice to them" sentiment is the result of autistic object personification.

like, as an autistic person, I have trouble being mean to anything with eyes and a mouth on it, even if it's just a silly drawing on a piece of scrap paper that my partner did. and if the inanimate thing has the appearance of talking back to me, I can't even bear to see it come to harm.

and like, I can recognize on some logical level that these are just things, that they don't have feelings, and that it's okay to be mean to something that cannot possibly feel hurt or pained. but that doesn't stop it from being real in my head.