Decades-long bet on consciousness ends
I wouldn't be surprised if consciousness ~conscience~ is just an emergent phenomenon resulting from any sufficiently powerful cognitive system (either biological or artificial) with sufficient inputs of its environment and, crucially, of itself. So as to be able to develop a rich model of itself and its relationship with its environment, and that thing will resemble a whole lot what we call consciousness ~conscience~. Then, of course, we will push the goalposts on what conscience is, so as to protect our fragile human egos.EDIT: fixed spelling of consciousness. Apologies from an english second language speaker.