During the speech [1], Yann (surprisingly) didn't mention consciousness at all. The focus of this segment was the need to "imagine" the future. The premise is that "common sense" – Yann's big theme of the talk – is about "filling in the gaps" of incomplete information. We fill in the gaps by imagining the future.

So consciousness was not raised at this point. But that doesn't mean that it couldn't be an emergent property.

[1] Am at NIPS and attended the speech.