The giant lookup table is objectively not conscious. I mean it has no internal state even. That is why giant lookup tables are often used as examples of processes which appear conscious but aren't.

But what happens when you start compressing that lookup table to an algorithm which is much smaller and produces the same output? It will almost certainly gain a complicated internal state. As you make it smaller and smaller to get to a reasonable size, it gets more like an actual human brain.

It will no longer be a static program - it will have to "learn" from experience and data. That would save a lot of hardcoded rules.

Eventually you will have the smallest possible program that produces the same output exactly. And it will probably be a perfect simulation of a human brain (if that is what you are trying to imitate.) It will produce exactly the same output as a human, and run exactly the same internal algorithm as a human. And now, how on Earth can you say it's not conscious?