Comment by asphodele

It's a way bigger leap to go from "non-human animals have degrees of consciousness" to "and we'll see that it's possible for machines too" than it is to go from "humans are conscious" to "non-human animals have degrees of consciousness".

The latter is a comparison of biological organism : biological organism, both of which are the outcomes of hundreds of millions of years of evolution; the former is biological organism : inanimate object.