i do think one of the underdiscussed things about ai is people's overwhelming tendency to confer exactly as much human consciousness onto literally anything as suits their motivations at the time
and like it just does not matter in my opinion. the interiority of another entity is relevant in particular inquiries and frameworks but it is not universally valuable to ask if ai can or cannot think or does or does not desire things. these questions are more or less totally unrelated to what we decide to do with it or how we decide to view it because people project magical soul qualities onto whatever they feel like and then withhold those qualities from anything they don't like including other human beings