[indigo945]

Just to add on to this, because I agree with all points you make: the article argues that "people chatting with Claude a lot and asking if it feels conscious [...] is neither good AI research, nor a deep philosophical investigation", but then builds half its argument on a second-rate sci-fi novel:

    > The sci-fi novel Permutation City captures the absurd endpoint of 
    > this logic when a simulated mind considers its own nature: "And if 
    > the computations behind all this had been performed over millennia, 
    > by people flicking abacus beads, would he have felt exactly the same? 
    > It was outrageous to admit it—but the answer had to be yes." [...] 
    > A theory that demands we accept consciousness emerging from millennia of 
    > flickering abacus beads is not a serious basis for moral consideration; 
    > it's a philosophical fantasy.

Concluding from a random novel the author has read that an argument that actual philosophers working in actual academia on actual problems of Philosophy of Mind is invalid because, to wit, it feels invalid -- I assume that's the "good AI research" and "deep philosophical investigation" the author was looking for, then?