Probably, but the questions I was thinking of are whether it's the design or the substrate that we consider significant.

The question comes up a lot here when there are posts about whether to consider LLMs conscious.

"We're going to condemn conscious entities to slavery"

vs

"They'll always just be machines and it's dehumanizing to consider them anything else"

No, not at all. For one thing, they said "made of brain cells", not brains--those are two very different things. (Yes, brains are made of brain cells, but that's a fallacy of affirmation of the consequent.)

Computers made of transistors were designed to function like computers made of vacuum tubes without negating the benefits of transistors.

Not if the organic tissue is faster or more energy efficient.