Chiang has, in fact, written on this topic before - see "The Lifecycle of Software Objects", and has speculated about sentience in AI, etc. This is not a "one-off", "I need money" type of article. I dare say he has thought about this much more than most people here.
replyFrom Wikipedia: In 2023, Chiang was named one of Time's 100 most influential people in AI.
That's the problem, he's a writer. He's not a research scientist like Hinton. If a writer uses his skills and stature to rehash a well-known argument about next-token prediction, then it is performative of his status and influence and doesn't contribute to shedding actual light on the debate/confusion.
replyIndeed it isn't a one-off. His last infamous article compared AIs to Xerox machine image compression. He convinces a certain type of crowd that is not technical enough to poke holes in his posturing.