The author demonstrates a common misunderstanding about medieval philosophy. The medieval Scholastic tradition does not maintain that the body and the soul were "distinct entities", or that matter was "vile". In fact that kind of thinking was the position of gnostic groups that Christian thinkers were resolutely opposed to. Read St Augustine's "Confessions" if you don't believe me.
Scholastic philosophers taught that body and soul were two components of the SAME entity, the human being, and that both were good because they were created by God. One good essence with two components, in other words. And while they claimed that the soul component was immaterial, that absolutely did NOT mean that the soul was not part of the natural world. To claim this is to seriously misunderstand their view of the physical world. To them, matter was only one component of creation.
The strict mind/body dualism was not introduced by medieval Scholastics, but rather by the advent of modernity in Descartes, and developed further by Kant and other enlightenment philosophers. In other words, this is very far from being a medieval problem - on the contrary, it a problem created by modern philosophy.
As for the author's equation between subjective experience and qualities of things, or his equation of processes in the brain with the mind itself, this just ignores the facts. Qualities we observe in nature are obviously distinct from the feelings they produce in us in many cases (beauty, sublimity, injustice, etc. produce distinct feelings like reverence, humility, anger), and if the mind were equivalent to brain processes, then certain powers of the mind that we obviously have would be impossible (such as our ability to reflect on those very same brain processes in ourselves).
If you think of yourself as a "programmer" or "coder" I think it's fair to say you might have incorrectly defined your role already. Your job is to design and implement software solutions that are reliable and compliant, and make business processes more efficient. Writing code should really be a relatively small piece of the puzzle, and arguably if you're spending a lot of time writing code, you're wasting time.
Writing code has always been a means to an end of getting the job done, and I consider being really interested in the practice of coding to be a bit odd. It's as if a carpenter got really into manual saws and got upset about an electric power saw because he "loves manual saws". Whether or not an AI spec is "code" really shouldn't matter if you're a software professional. You are designer/engineer of software systems, not a "coder".
“Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.”
Thinking quickly is overrated... and besides, doing it well only comes with lots of experience. I say just keep thinking slowly and deliberately for now