If you accept that everything which makes a person what they are (emotions, thoughts, memories, and consciousness itself) is the result of chemical processes and electrical impulses going on in the meaty substrate of the brain, then there is no reason to doubt the possibility of replicating the effect in the non-meaty substrate of computers, once the computers and our understanding of the workings of the brain advance to certain points.
The definition of 'consciousness' is, of course, the trickiest part of that; how can you prove a machine is conscious? You never can, I think, because any test you devise to measure 'consciousness' is going to contain inherent biases of one kind or another; there is, after all, no objective way to measure it. I think, at the point where an AI tells us that it is conscious, and can convince a majority of people that its thought processes are independent and unique, we have to start giving them the benefit of the doubt (as we do naturally to every other person we encounter) and call them 'conscious'. And, I do believe that may happen in my lifetime.
The definition of 'consciousness' is, of course, the trickiest part of that; how can you prove a machine is conscious? You never can, I think, because any test you devise to measure 'consciousness' is going to contain inherent biases of one kind or another; there is, after all, no objective way to measure it. I think, at the point where an AI tells us that it is conscious, and can convince a majority of people that its thought processes are independent and unique, we have to start giving them the benefit of the doubt (as we do naturally to every other person we encounter) and call them 'conscious'. And, I do believe that may happen in my lifetime.
