It's important to note that you don't need to be able to simulate "consciousness" (raw feels, philosophically contentious, who knows what it's made of) to get "

It's important to note that you don't need to be able to simulate "consciousness" (raw feels, philosophically contentious, who knows what it's made of) to get "intelligence" (by which I mean powerful optimizing behaviour in a wide variety of environments). It may or may not be the case that anything intelligent enough necessarily becomes conscious anyway, but there's no way that intrinsic difficulties with simulating "consciousness" could block us from getting intelligent behaviour.