My claw-like is hooked up to my internal cameras (baby-cams) and to my Dreame Ultra X40. That gives it a body and sense organs since it can check the cameras to see if the living room floor is clear before sending the vacuum off. I don't think that gives it consciousness. Is it the sample rate?

The question is somewhat ill-defined, though. We 'experience' reality continuously because of how we are, but a sleeping human in deep non-REM has the mind not actually active. So they're not a conscious being. So conscious/unconscious is not a line I think easily drawn[0]. Whatever, this stuff is much more well-trodden than this HN comment so I won't rehash. I, too, am surprised that Ted Chiang whose work seems so cleverly novel in so many ways has what seems to me a pedestrian view.

0: very sorites, you know