Panpsychism is the idea that everything is conscious to some degree (which, to be clear, isn’t what I think). In the past, the common response to the idea was, “So, rocks are conscious?” This argument was meant to illustrate the absurdity of panpsychism.
Now, we have made rocks represent pins and switches, enabling us to use them as computers. We made them complex enough that we developed neural networks and created large language models–the most complex of which have nodes that represent space, time, and the abstraction of truth, according to some papers. So many people are convinced these things are conscious, which has many suggesting that everything may be conscious to some degree.
In other words, the possibility of rocks being conscious is now commonly used to argue in favor of panpsychism, when previously it was used to argue against it.
The word consciousness confuses everybody. Just ask yourself what the rock is aware of. The more aware something is, like better eyes or a better brain, the more conscious it is. That’s why when you sleep you are less conscious than when you are awake but still more conscious than a rock.