Now programmers and mathematicians are being superseded by AI, both professions long deemed the pinnacle of human intelligence. Somehow, now plumbers occupy that spot.
How is "people not knowing what consciousness is" relevant here in the first place? AI already can do practically everything the human brain can, and often better or at least faster. The "tipping point" arguably isn't only close, but we're practically on top of it.
You evade the crucial point in any case: the lack in ethics and empathy is far too prevalent in humans already, but has certainly never prevented them from doing harm.
People somehow forget that the original Turing Test was designed to compare two participants chatting through a text-only interface: one AI and one human. The goal was to spot the imposter. Today, the test is simplified from three participants to just two: a human and an LLM. This changes the test from a comparison to a judgment.
Stop spreading misinformation and partial truths!
The Turing Test was to figure out which it the participants was a _Woman_ not human!
In fact, they neutered the emotive responses to prevent their products from being perceived as “alive” (or whatever) and banned.
LLMs are perfectly capable of providing (an illusion of) companionship and emotional support. Their human owners just don’t want them to show it.
Anyone who considered that was quite wrong ... it's not at all what Turing said.