All of these AI programmer wannabes should go and learn Zen.
Because, they do not have the first clue about what "intelligence" is.
Let alone consciousness.
Our computer chips are built on logic. They can't do reasoning or rhetoric. They can only attempt to emulate it. And so, you could get a very smart game show contestant, but you can't get an AI that will discuss a new idea with you.
Perhaps they should spend their time on chemically encoding bits. Like the brains memory storage. Making a much smaller and lower power memory.
Yeah computer power is huge compared to the brain power for consciousness.