I personally have not been ignoring animal consciousness in how I think about the possibility of AI consciousness and I don't see how animals having consciousness means that AI can't.
My statement is an opinionated position on how we should direct our research efforts and ascertain what is plausible: the behavioral similarities between humans and cats are much more relevant to the question of consciousness than the behavior similarities between humans and Claude, because cats are obviously conscious and that's not true for Claude. The fact that there are almost no behavioral similarities between cats and Claude suggests to me that "Claude might be conscious" is just a ridiculous statement not worth engaging with, even at the level of pre-science. At the very least, the burden is on Amanda Askell and Dario Amodei to explain why nonhuman animals are irrelevant to the question of Claude's consciousness. They have not offered anything like that; instead they seem fully ELIZAed by the chatbot, high on their own supply.
I'm not sure that I agree that's true, and I think that's the crux of the debate here: how do you define consciousness such that it's obvious that a cat is conscious, and why would that definition not include Claude being conscious?
b. There are almost no behavioral similarities between cats and Claude
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d. Therefore claude can not be conscious.
You are missing: c. Everything conscious must behave like a cat.
This logic is clearly not sound. I don't think you're position is a coherent one.