Will AI ever = conciousness or sentience?

[Cato]

I'm too ignorant on the topic to provide an informed opinion, but I've enjoyed tagging along. Something else I will add to my 'needs delving into' list.

I'll just state that I like Z's comment regarding the potential of consciousness being an emergent property of the brain, but think it as yet lacks explanatory power for the purpose of AI and the like.

Regarding the pursuit of framing the question, I'd like to share an article by Massimo Pigliucci in response to an interview about the complexity of the internet and its potential for 'waking up'. I'll paste part of his conclusion. Thought it was apropos.

http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2...ernet.html

...let us stress the point once more: neither complexity per se nor computational ability on its own explain consciousness. Yes, conscious brains are complex, and they are capable of computation, but they are clearly capable of something else (to feel what it is like to be an organism of a particular type), and we still don’t have a good grasp of what is missing in our account of consciousness to explain that something else. The quest continues...