Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Hundreds of thousands of human neurons growing in a dish" It seems doubtful that hundreds of thousands of human neurons would lead to consciousness. "Although the company calls its system DishBrain, the neurons are a far cry from an actual brain, Kagan says, and show no signs of consciousness." ...then again, would they be able to tell? There's not a lot of I/O in this situation.
Indeed. Although the lab couldn't check for signs of consciousness. If they'd been able to do so, they'd have cracked the "hard problem" of consciousness, which would be far bigger news. So this is blather at best, and ethics-washing at worst.
I think "being able to describe exhaustively the conditions under which something is conscious" is sometimes called the "pretty hard problem of consciousness", as opposed to the hard problem? (Also considered unsolved though)