[soulofmischief]

I understand the idea, but my take is that while PKD was by all accounts a visionary who could see things few others could, I wonder how his opinion on this would have evolved over the last four decades.

Like what makes something an "artifact"? That it is a superficial image produced intentionally by another? Mass propaganda and social pipelining have produced the same phenomenon in humans.

Is it that the robot doesn't "feel" like a human does? Well, now we're in extraordinarily subjective territory, dealing with qualia, and the distinction will become more difficult as neural models continue to evolve and experience the world in the same way we do.

I like PKD's take but I think it's an open question.