I made a smartass comment earlier comparing AI to fire, but it’s really my favorite metaphor for it - and it extends to this issue. Depending on how you define it, fire seems to meet the requirements for being alive. It tends to come up in the same conversations that question whether a virus is alive. I think it’s fair to think of LLMs (particularly the current implementations) as intelligent - just in the same way we think of fire or a virus as alive. Having many of the characteristics of it, but being a step removed.