I don't think an LLM alone can be intelligent... but I do think it can be the central building block for a sentient self-aware intelligent system.

Humans can be thought of as being made of a set of field-specific neural networks, tied together by a looping self-evaluating multi-modal LLM that we call "conscience". The ability of an LLM to consume its own output, is what allows it to be used as the conscience loop, and current LLMs being trained on human language with all its human nuance, is an extra bonus.

Probably some other non-text multi-modal neural networks capable of consuming their own output could also be developed and be put in a loop, but right now we have LLMs, and we kind of understand most of what they're saying, and they kind of understand most of what we're saying, so that makes communication easier.

I mean, it is anthropomorphizing, but in this case I think it makes sense because it's also anthropogenic, since these human language LLMs get trained on human language.