Well said - my reasoning above is why I'm so drawn to Analytic Idealism. I can't get past my own experience with programming to draw the leap that there is some magic number of logic gates, memory and complex processing that emerges into consciousness. Materialism kind of dictates that that must be the case. Panpsychism also appealed (consciousness is fundamental to the material wold), but AI scratches that itch in a much more satisfying way. Ultimately I guess I'm skeptical that a pure materialist perspective will grant us the necessary insights into consciousness necessary to create a compelling AI. Thanks for the article and the convo!