Doesn't have to be 'doomsday'.
Plenty of 'stem' thinkers expound on 'what is consciousness' by re-hashing old ideas as if they just occurred to them.
It goes back to the old quote ~ "Stephen Hawking famously wrote that “philosophy is dead” because the big questions that used to be discussed by philosophers are now in the hands of physicist" And then the follow up, "physicists then proceed to re-invent bad philosophy"(unknown).
The math behind the stealth bomber sat on a bookshelf for decades before someone realized what it could be used for. In STEM education, there should be some attempt at a 'rear view mirror', to know what has come before. AI is just the latest obvious area.