I honestly fear the day we create an artificial conscious being, especially if it's non-organic. It's intelligence might evolve exponentially whilst its experience coexisting with other conscious beings will be non-existent... an extremely dangerous combination.
OTH, since we ourselves do not even know how to detect, quantify or qualify consciousness, maybe the "awakening" event won't happen until the far future.
OTH, since we ourselves do not even know how to detect, quantify or qualify consciousness, maybe the "awakening" event won't happen until the far future.
All of this uncertainty puts us in an unfortunate position: we do not know how to make conscious machines, and (given current measurement techniques) we won’t know if we have created one. At the same time, this issue is of great importance, because the existence of conscious machines would have dramatic ethical consequences.