All of those esoteric questions about how we define consciousness are fine and interesting, but the tech companies are not pushing those questions as part of a quest to advance understanding. They want us believing they're making something powerful that we must accede our agency to.

This is what Amodei and Anthropic's goofball house philosopher who likens training an LLM to raising a child being everywhere all of the sudden is about. We can't allow ourselves to be suckered.

I think the context depends. I'm in Canada, so we worry a lot less about students needing phones in class for safety reasons. I'm good with requiring students put them away during class unless there's a good pedagogical reason for using them, or the student has an accommodation.

I have a background in educational tech. The first thing is to stop the push for AI in education. Be careful about cellphone bans for 2 reasons. First, students in schools lacking computers, may be disadvantaged by a total ban. Second, they may need them if shooters or ICE come into their schools.