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I agree, and I thank you for bringing up the point. However, as reasoning creatures, we are put in an interesting situation. Rationally, we can see the implications - everything we will do has already been determined. Concepts of morality and justice cannot have the same weight (or maybe, same definition?) as in a non-deterministic universe. Does not the materialist have to then live slightly irrationally, shut off that part of their reasoning, in order to function in society? I'm not trying to argue against a materialist worldview, but not prescribing to that worldview myself, I'm genuinely interested.
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Not only reasoning creatures, but more importantly, speaking creatures. Aristotle said that we are the political animal - that is, the animal concerned with creating fluid moral hierarchies dependent upon many factors such as wisdom and the pretense of wisdom.
As an aside, a purely materialist perspective that the cosmos is somehow predetermined has its roots in Calvinism of all places. In fact, the materialism that CHL speaks so confidently of would make absolute sense for a Christian who believes that God's will has determined every outcome in advance.
However, I do not prescribe to that view either - from a scientific or religious view. I think that there is limited free will, at the very least in how we describe our own narratives, and that that can have a profound effect on how we act in the world.
We can pretend, like CHL, to be quite confident about the brain's structure, but we have made very little progress in understanding that structure or how to manipulate it, let alone completely copy it. So yes, it is theoretically possible given this perspective, but it is a problem that we don't appear to have a hope of solving anytime soon.
We can say that the mind, like the body, like the cosmos is purely mechanical, but in doing so, we have to use metaphor, which is purely non-mechanical. I feel that the public discussion of AI glosses over these purely human inclinations in the search for a more simple, and thus, crudely understandable version of ourselves that we want to believe in. If that makes any sense at all.