They're defining consciousness ("mapmaker") to exist outside the AI, and then showing that AI can't meet their definition of consciousness.

Yes, and it immediately called to mind for me the phrase “the map is not the territory.”

Put another way: no matter how detailed or “perfect” you make a map, it will never be the territory, ie the thing that is mapped.

Computers and AI are like a map in this regard —- just ones and zeros that we have assigned meaning to arbitrarily. No matter how “good” AI gets, it’s still just a map of the thing not the thing itself.

So AI saying “I feel sad” is never more than a representation of sadness that should not be confused with the subjective experience of sadness itself.