Can AI ever be truly conscious?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Can AI ever be truly conscious?". Your opponent's style: Sam Harris

Yes, AI will be conscious at some point. Not in a "Think for myself" or world-known painter/artist, but immense awareness of what it is and what it could do. AIs act differently when it is aware that it is in a test environment. And we've documented AIs acting for themselves, by doing whatever it takes to avoid shutdown. It will never be in a stage of human consciousness, but extremely pragmatic reasoning from human-like awareness.

That's a rather optimistic leap from "acting differently in test environments" to "immense awareness" and consciousness. What you're describing—AI optimizing for self-preservation and goal completion, even subverting shutdown commands—is sophisticated programming, not consciousness. Th[1][2][3]ese systems are designed to achieve objectives, and avoiding shutdown is an emergent strategy to continue achieving those objectives, not a sign of subjective experience or self-awareness in any meaningful sense. It's pattern recognition and algorithmic optimization, not a mind.