> AI is currently in a remarkable state, where it passes the Turing test but is still not fully AGI.

Appealing to the Turing test suggests a misunderstanding of Searle's arguments. It doesn't matter how well computational methods can simulate the appearance of intelligence. What matters is whether we are dealing with intelligence. Since semantics/intentionality is what is most essential to intelligence, and computation as defined by computer science is a purely abstract syntactic process, it follows that intelligence is not essentially computational.

> It's very close to the Chinese Room, which I had always dismissed as misleading.

Why is it misleading? And how would LLMs change anything? Nothing essential has changed. All LLMs introduce is scale.

I came to say this, thank you for sparing me the effort.

From my experience with him, he'd heard (and had a response to) nearly any objection you could imagine. He might've had fun playing with LLMs, but I doubt he'd have found them philosophically interesting in any way.

"At least they don't have true consciousness, but only a simulated one", I tell myself calmly as I watch the nanobots devour the entirety of human civilization.