While I remain undecided on the matter, this whole debate is reminiscent of Karel Čapek's War with the Newts [1936]. In particular the public discourse from a time before the newts took over. "It would certainly be an overstatement to say that nobody at that time ever spoke or wrote about anything but the talking newts. People also talked and wrote about other things such as the next war, the economic crisis, football, vitamins and fashion; but there was a lot written about the newts, and much of it was very ill-informed. This is why the outstanding scientist, Professor Vladimir Uher (University of Brno), wrote an article for the newspaper in which he pointed out that the putative ability of Andrias Scheuchzer to speak, which was really no more than the ability to repeat spoken words like a parrot, ..." Note the irony of the professor's attempt to improve an ill-informed debate by contributing his own piece of misinformation, equating newt speech to mere parrot-like mimicry.
Čapek, intriguingly, happens to be the person who first used the word robot, which was coined by his brother.
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