Agreed. We should be asking what the machines measurably can or can't do. If it can't be measured, then it doesn't matter from an engineering standpoint. Does it have a soul? Can't measure it, so it doesn't matter.
That's a bit too pessimistic. Often times you can productively find some measurable proxy for the thing you care about but can't measure. Turing's test is a famous example, of that.
Sometimes you only have a one-sided proxy. Eg I can't tell you whether Claude has a soul, but I'm fairly sure my dishwasher ain't.
When push came to shove, it turns out nobody really cared about the Turing test and immediately found excuses to discount it as soon as machines blew through that goalpost. It's fundamentally theological, but the thing is, it doesn't matter. It has no impact on what the machines can demonstrably do.
