Is the substrate important? If you made an accurate model of a human brain in software, in silicon or using water pipes and valves, would it be able to tnink? Would it be conscious? I have no idea.
Me neither but that's why I don't like arguments that say LLM's can't do X because of their substrate, as if that was self-evident. It's like the aliens saying surely humans can't think because they're made of meat.
I am just trying to make the point that the machines that we make tend to end up rather different to their natural analogues. The effective ones anyway. Ornithopters were not successful. And I suspect that articifial intelligences will end up very different to human intelligence.
Okay... but an airplane in essence is modelling the shape of a bird. Where do you think the inspiration for the shape of a plane came from? lmao. come on.
Humans are not all that original, we take what exists in nature and mangle it in some way to produce a thing.
The same thing will eventually happen with AI - not in our lifetime though.