The author refers to their dad as a coward.

When the wife wanted to divorce, the dad recruited his mother-in-law to convince the wife to stay on the marriage.

He was selfishly hiding information and making lifelong decisions for everyone because "he knew best."

The dad died of a heart attack. His family was too ignorant to know a quick drive to the hospital was the best action. They didn't know because the 911 operator told them to wait for the ambulance (for legal reasons, they will not tell you to rush to the hospital. Imagine the liability of a wreck).

There's no need to play devil's advocate. Private decisions were made, and we all have the privilege of reading about the outcome. It gives us much to consider, and not much else.

For sure, pain is useful when it leads to learning. We learn through feedback from our senses. We're completely dependent upon this mode in the beginning.

As our brains mature, we learn how to predict our environments in ways to maximize pleasure, and avoid pain (grossly oversimplified). We learn more about others, what works, and what doesn't.

An AI also learns from feedback, but is it ever perceiving anything?

That's a very meta view. There's levels to consciousness for sure, due to intelligence and perception.

But, my mind never leaves my skull so it's definitely bound to my brain and nothing else (ignoring electrical fields).

We can imagine what it's like to be other things, but we can never be sure (and almost certainly would not accurately match reality). Our imagination is bound to our senses, so it's limited. I can't even be sure that the color red that comes to my mind is the same color you see in your mind. As long as our imaginations paint the same color every time red is perceived: we'd be none the wiser and would go on thinkong we see the same thing. And also consider animals that can perceive colors and sounds beyond human range. Does this say anything more about consciousness?

An electron almost certainly is not thinking or aware, but does it perceive? Does a thermostat on a wall perceive temperature? Do AIs perceive anything?

Is perception even useful to think about when trying to define consciousness?

I'm rambling off topic... going back to your points: if something is sufficiently intelligent to understand the workings of a thing: does this automatically place the understood thing in a lower consciousness?

Could a diety, or a force of nature have a higher consciousness than us? Or are we above the force, in terms of consciousness? It doesn't even seem useful to make these comparisons....

It makes sense when you try and disprove the question.

True. There's always going to be uncertainty about this kind of topic.

I think the jist of the article is that we will use whatever definition of consciousness is useful to us, for any given use case

Much the same way treat pigs vs dogs, based on how hungry or cute we feel.