Debating AI consciousness requires a working definition tied to possible evidence and practical consequences. Until we can say what would differ if an AI were conscious, the debate is almost certainly group confusion about words.

“If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle.”

-- William James, Pragmatism (1907), Lecture II, “What Pragmatism Means.”

James’s principle calls for some useful distinction between conscious and non-conscious AI before discussion can meaningfully begin.