As long as people are reacting to the metaphor, there will be authors who will unscrupulously use and abuse it.
Actually, it has nothing to do with AI. It's a statement by the author that they believe the consciousness is a product of the brain and nothing more. That view reduces humans to machines, the only difference being in the material.
Agree it has nothing to do with AI. Even if we, for the sake of argument, agree that human beings are machines, why should the appearance of human-mimicking reasoning imply sentience above and beyond any other (complex?) computation? Why are LLMs possibly sentient and not, say, pocket calculators?
Actually, it has nothing to do with AI. It's a statement by the author that they believe the consciousness is a product of the brain and nothing more. That view reduces humans to machines, the only difference being in the material.