I wrote a whole dissertation arguing there is no hard problem of consciousness. People assume that means I think subjective experience isn't real. It means the opposite.

The hard problem assumes that if science can't explain something, it must not exist. But there are lots of things science doesn't explain that we accept without considering this a problem: friendship, moral value, political facts. Why should subjective experience be different? Declaring it a 'hard problem' smuggles in a philosophical assumption that most people never examine.

(1) The 'hard problem' is a philosophical framing, not a discovered feature of reality. (2) Science not explaining subjective experience doesn't make subjective experience mysterious or threatened (3) The things AI clearly lacks, subjective experience, feeling, what it's like to be something, are exactly the things my view keeps safely out of reach of scientific reduction