More of just a nerd snipe or red herring to waste time on.
Like working to understand consciousness probably won't actually advance building an GAI in any meaningful way.
Nor will it be the driver of how we interact with our surroundings be it rock, dirt, tree fish, dog, human, robot or universe?
I think that the question of conscience is actually not really relevant in the context of the problems it gets brought up in.
Like morality or artificial intelligence. In these contexts whether something is conscious or not doesn't really have a practical application nor should it be the moral guide for the way we react to things.
I would still believe in not "hurting" "unconcious" things even though the logic would assert that it was okay to do this. And I believe others would struggle with the same.
Like I may still believe that hurting a robot is immoral even though its not "conscious".
I think what I am trying to explain is I don't believe that the level of conciousness of an entity should be the moral guide for how that entity has a right to be treated.
Mostly because of the logical conclusion that it implies: it is alright to treat a lower consciousness entity more poorly than a higher consciousness being.
If we learned that dogs where less conscious or even not conscious would you be okay with treating them poorly?
What I am really saying is I don't think people love their dogs because of there level of consciousness. Its everything else that matters.