From a philosopher's viewpoint, Chalmers's work on p-zombies is very respectable. It is exactly the kind of thing that good philosophers do, however mystifying it may seem to a layman.

Nevertheless, to more practical people - particularly those of a materialist, reductionist, monist persuasion, it all looks a little silly. I would say that the question of whether p-zombies are possible is about as important to AI researchers as the question of whether there are non-standard models of set theory is to a working mathematician.

That is, not much. It is a very fundamental and technically difficult matter, but, in the final analysis, the resolution of the question matters a whole lot less than you might have originally thought. Chalmers and Searle may well be right about the possibility of p-zombies, but if they are, it is for narrow technical reasons. And if that has the consequence that you can't completely rule out dualism, well ..., so be it. Whether philosophers can or can not rule something out makes very little difference to me. I'm more interested in whether a model is useful than in whether it has a possibility of being true.