It's not mostly mimicking, it's exactly identical. That was always the key point. Indistinguishable from the outside, one thing understands and the other doesn't.

I feel like I could make the same arguments about the chinese room except my definition of "understanding" hinges on whether there's a tin of beans in the room or not. You can't tell from the outside, but that's the difference. Both cases with a person inside answering questions act identically and you can never design a test to tell which room has the tin of beans in.

Now you might then say "I don't care if there's a tin of beans in there, it doesn't matter or make any sort of difference for anything I want to do", in which case I'd totally agree with you.

> just like you cannot prove or disprove the claim that consciousness arises from chemical processes.

Like understanding, I haven't seen a particularly useful definition of consciousness that works around the edges. Without that, talking of a claim like this is pointless.