Clarification: That we don’t know exactly how consciousness (human or animal) emerged doesn’t mean it’s hard to know *if* we are conscious or *that* something else is not conscious. We are self-evidently conscious. And all consciousness we’ve seen has emerged biologically. There’s no reason to think anything non-biological is conscious. If you’re positing a non-biological consciousness you better have some insanely impressive argument I haven’t seen anything close to. Otherwise you’re just like the person who thought the first calculators were conscious because the representations and automated rules they used produced such impressive calculations. PS Open-ended computers are amazing, I love them, and I place very few limits on what they can accomplish. That doesn’t mean I think they’re conscious.