I totally agree with your reading/impressions of this essay.

I normally really like Chiang‘s writings so the complete disregard for the possibility of unknown complex emergent properties in large neural networks and the stunning lack of curiosity shown about this new and powerful technology and its potential shocked me from someone like him.

His being so sure about something he can’t possibly know felt like an insecure zealot desperately clinging to an object of faith rather than a calm, rational actor searching for truth in the face of the unknown.