A lot of conversations around the term consciousness mix up a couple of things. First, there is the term consciousness which is a word given to something that h

A lot of conversations around the term consciousness mix up a couple of things. First, there is the term consciousness which is a word given to something that humans observe. It encapsulates an idea, and we know[0] that it's a shared experience because the term arose in other languages as well. The concept of consciousness may be not limited to humans, for example an alien race may have also discovered this concept and given their own symbolic representation of it that they use to communicate between each other, but the frame of this whole debate needs to keep in mind that we are the ones that needed a term for this. So we are the ones that are the best judges of what consciousness is and isn't to the best of our knowledge, leaving spirituality aside. The encoding of consciousness into states of heat or rocks in the beach is a flawed example because the mapping of encoding is a non-arbitrary decision. Any length can encode any number, for example, the meaning is in the parameters set by the agent, not the other way around. The example falls on its face anyway because it seeks to compress the evaluate the heated iron in a static state. Real consciousness amongst humans has varying states. For example, if one were to evaluate the heated iron and then ask it to evaluate a new situation, it wouldn't. It would simply keep being heated iron. Real AI wouldn't pass a consciousness test without demonstrating real reasoning about a completely novel situation. For example, I would expect to ask it to evaluate a design for a solution to an as-yet-unsolved problem and have it reliably communicate drawbacks. Current AI does nothing of the sort. [0] As much as anything can be known, anyway.