The phenomenal character is all that we have. We simply cannot know how something “really is” nor what its secret noumenal character is or might be. We can only speculate, but there is no direct evidence and never will be.

The noumenal is a ghost that will always be chased and never caught; making claims of absolute certainty about it will only reveal your biases and predilections, not anything deeper than that. And the reason is that something’s essence simply cannot be known (and in fact might not even exist in the senses most people mean it).

Right now AI is limited. It possesses maybe one or two of the 8-10 important modules of being a person. But if ChatGPT or its more advanced successors gain a physical body that could sense the world, could claim to feel pain, could seem to love you in an embodied sense, could exhibit all signs of care and distress at the thought of loss, and express grief, could we be so certain that there was nothing at all behind those electronic eyes?

I am just not so sure of that. And you should not be, either. Those who express incurious certitude about this are how we could very easily perpetrate horrors beyond imagining.