Consciousness is vital to AI because there are vast amounts of data that can only be measured through consciousness — data that AI absolutely requires to solve

Consciousness is vital to AI because there are vast amounts of data that can only be measured through consciousness — data that AI absolutely requires to solve the hardest human problems. This type of data is called "qualia" — the experience of pain, for example. An unconscious AI can process data about what causes pain: brain activity. Only a conscious AI can process data about pain itself, and only because a conscious AI measures pain from its own experience of pain. The same can be said of any conscious experience that follows the spectrum from fear to love, terror to joy. If we want AI to solve human problems, it will need data about what it feels like to experience reality, and that data can only come by being conscious itself.