Because it still makes sense to reason about them that way, as weird as it may be. It's like the Chinese room problem, even though we know nobody is inside.

It's like when people say "our brain thinks that ..." when they talk about something we do subconsciously, or some illusion we fall for. What does that even mean? Is our brain suddenly a detached entity thinking on its own? Then what am I using to think? Yet, everybody understands what is meant by that.

So I don't think people keep forgetting that llms aren't conscious, at least as long as we talk about the target audience of articles like this, eg hn folks.