Quantum consciousness...

[I_am_not_mafia]

"the state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings".
Why would my definition be any different to the official definition?

If that's your definition then I see absolutely no reason why an AI could not be conscious. In fact, many forms of embodied AI match that criterion already. The important factor here is that the AI is embodied and situated in the world. So I am not referring to some Big data algorithm running on some server farm somewhere but an agent controller running in a robot that can sense and act within an environment.

But I am fascinated to know if we can ever know if an advanced AI can ever experience consciousness.
and if so, can they ever prove it?

Can we ever prove that we are conscious? Can we prove that an animal is? This is why it is important to define it first, so we have some way of determining whether something is conscious or not.

Personally I don't think that the above definition is adequate. A self driving car matches that definition. I would argue that consciousness requires an agent to be aware of its own internal state. So for example, if you have a robot that has got stuck and its primary algorithm makes it repeat the same failed action repeatedly and not improve its situation, another module observing this behaviour at a higher level over time might take control and try something else. Much like in the fashion of Brookes' subsumption architecture, or the role of cognition when the emotional reaction is to do something silly.

Either way, there is no reason to pre-suppose that we cannot build artificial conscious agents.