I think you're using a different meaning of the word conscious than the GP? You seem to be talking about awake, they're talking about a much more abstract idea.

I think you're using a different meaning of the word conscious than the GP? You seem to be talking about awake, they're talking about a much more abstract idea. A person who is sleeping or in a vegetative state is not currently getting new inputs fed into some parts of their brain, so it's not surprising that their brain "lights up differently," nor does it imply anything about a piece of software that is getting new inputs that might be being integrated into its model (of course, a model that is trained and then repeatedly used without further integration is not in any way comparable to a brain). This more abstract idea of consciousness is definitely not a solved problem - people can't even manage to agree on whether non-human animals have it. And a lot of internet arguments for why this or that neural network can't be conscious probably also rule 5 year olds out of it too.