I agree with what you said at the beginning of your comment, and what I think you're getting at is something like panpsychism [1], where consciousness is an inh

I agree with what you said at the beginning of your comment, and what I think you're getting at is something like panpsychism [1], where consciousness is an inherent property in the universe, as opposed to an emergent view where at some point there is no consciousness in a given system and once it becomes complex enough consciousness emerges or develops. I don't necessarily have an argument for either of them right now. But you asked me "why believe in the line at all?" -- I'm not making an argument for what consciousness is, I'm only claiming that the current state of the art algorithms we have developed and AI we currently build have nothing to do with topics like self-awareness, consciousness, theory of mind, etc. One day we'll get there I'm sure. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism