> It does nothing but derail the conversation into absurdism.

The conversation (about whether AI is “intelligent”) was already absurd, I’m just pointing it out ;)

The more important conversation is about whether AI is useful, dangerous, and/or worth it. If AI is competent enough at a task to replace a human for 1/10 the cost, it doesn’t really matter if it “has a mortal soul” or “responds to sensory stimuli” or “can modify its weights in real time”, we need to be talking about what that job loss means for society.

That’s my main frustration: that the “is it intelligent” debate devolves into pointless unsettleable philosophical questions and sucks up all the oxygen, and the actual things of consequence go undiscussed.