I don’t think the question about AI is will it become conscious, because as long as we project consciousness onto it, it will become a character in our story. A Neuroscience fact is that we cannot know for sure that anyone is conscious except for ourselves.
We can observe what is associated with conscious behavior in others, but we can only be sure of our own consciousness. Everyone else could be zombies or machines. We assume consciousness on others.
This is how we see reality, so AI will definitely become conscious.
We will never be able to test it for sure, but neither can we test our family members, our partners, to know if they are conscious.
The Writers' High 