alt Hacker NewsI don't think anyone is convinced the questions of consciousness are finally settled by the article stating them loudly, just that "if they were conscious, this would have horrible consequences for our society, so we must never assume that they are" was not the author's stance. The author's position is the other way around: that AI is not conscious so therefore assigning AI consciousness anyways would have all of those horrible consequences for no reason. That's their position regardless if everyone agrees with it.
Fair enough :) I agree, and would boil down the article to "Assuming they are conscious will have horrible consequences for our society" instead.
I think that's quite plausible, but do think that if they're conscious, then it's our moral duty to accept those consequences and act accordingly (or stop creating conscious beings). The real trick is just knowing whether they are or not.