Maybe the Chomsky theory of language is the basis of all intelligence is correct. Hell, maybe you don't need even a semblance of consciousness for highly intelligent agents.
Like we have blindsight, maybe blindthought also exists.
Chomsky rates language as the difference between animal and human intelligence, not the basis of all forms of intelligence. I don't think Chat GPT has the sentience and self driven goal focus of a lab rat today.
In any case, Chomsky thinks of chat gpt as autocomplete on steroids, not as a form of intelligence.
It's a good thing all future neural networks will be LLMs then.