“it seems like a person—and that, he says, is reason enough to start treating it like one”
This statement reveals that he neglected to take into account two important phenomenon: anthropomorphism, and the “Clever Hans” effect. Either he’s ignorant of those phenomenon, in which case he’s not qualified to make any statements about the “intelligence” of the AI, or he chose to ignore those phenomenon, in which case he is not unbiased enough to make any statements about the intelligence of the AI.
Bias creeps in unannounced for all humans. ALL.