Futurology

The hope is that we don't actually need consciousness to produce something useful. And ultimately, that would be for the best. If we know definitively that silicon computing cannot result in consciousness, then many of the ethical concerns of using AIs disappear. You still have the ethical concerns of replacing human labor and using stolen work to train them, but at least you don't have to worry about creating a slave race in the process.

Nobody understands what consciousness is - nor is that even relevant here. Artificial Super Intelligence that isn’t conscious is a perfectly coherent concept. While it’s valid to discuss whether a system like that could be conscious, there’s absolutely no reason to assume it needs to be.