Ah, thanks for clarifying. I often skip right over the word “consciousness” as it’s quite loaded. I see it as some combination of memory, arrousal, and awareness. It may not be as special as we’d like to believe as there are many levels of consciousness throughout the species on this planet.
As to the <20% who say never, you’re right, I shouldn’t skip over those views so quickly. Maybe we won’t ever get there, but having worked with computers since 1996 and having been exposed to neural networks in college, it seems quite plausible to me, so I align with the >80%. From there, creating true-to-life simulations seems inevitable.