Not that I agree they’re conscious, but this is an incorrect and overly simplistic definition of a LLM. They are probabilistic in nature, yea, and they work on tokens, or fragments, of words. But it’s about as much of an oversimplification to say humans are just markov chains that make plausible sentences that can come after [the context] as it is to say modern GPTs are.
You should explain to your father that zionism did not emerge in a vacuum within the Jewish community. It was controversial the moment it arose and was as supported as yiddishist movements that were expressly anti-zionist. This was an intense divide that even resulted in violence on both sides by both sides. Nazis and the staggeringly entrenched antisemitism of eastern Europe/Russia ended up sorting it out in favor of the zionist anti-yiddishists, though.