I'm not sure that's a compelling argument. Humans can be put into a similar state where they are unconscious and not thinking. Think of someone in a coma, for example, where we actually measure and confirm that there is no brain activity where they're in that state.

They are not actively conscious, but that doesn't nullify their consciousness from when they were awake, right?

>My objection is the strange idea that humans are automatons that are keyed off input like a clockwork machine and operate sequentially. This is clearly not the case.

Well, a few thoughts here. First, it's worth noting that the argument isn't necessarily that AI are conscious in the way that humans are, nor that humans are strictly automatons.

But I think the more interesting thing is that our understanding about consciousness has evolved quite a bit in just the last fifty to one hundred years. We used to think that only humans were conscious, but assumed that primates, cows, dogs, and other mammals were just automatons. Then we started to think: okay, maybe primates are conscious. Then eventually: well, dogs also seem to have consciousness, and then rodents, etc.

This has continued such that most people in the study of consciousness think all mammals are conscious, and the debate is shifting down to insects and other creatures that we do think/have thought of more as automatons. We don't actually know where to draw the line, because it's essentially impossible to really feel/know the inner states of other living beings.

In the face of all this uncertainty, Chalmers just points out that since we understand consciousness so little, that ultimately we should probably be less definitive in pronouncing which things do or do not have it.