I'd also point out that even if you accepted the Chinese room thought experiment it doesn't apply. Modern AI systems have tons of non-deterministic input. They

I'd also point out that even if you accepted the Chinese room thought experiment it doesn't apply. Modern AI systems have tons of non-deterministic input. They have cameras and they will do completely different things if a photon hits one pixel vs another. This is an input that has true quantum randomness and the computer will have a completely different response based on this true quantum randomness. Modern AI systems are absolutely not deterministic which is required for the Chinese room thought experiment. Non-determinism may apply to a black box computer without real world input but as soon as you add non-determinism which modern real world AI systems absolutely do have you break any comparison to the Chinese room thought experiment. So the entire "herp derp it's like a catapult" is wrong straight off the bat. Modern AI systems act based on non-deterministic input and since non-determinism propagates and makes the output of the entire system non-deterministic you better have a better explanation than "It's deterministic" to explain why a computer can't be conscious.