@fourmajor I disagree to an extent. This is a "how many hairs make a beard" question. There is some liminal space, but your profile picture clearly has one and @freemo 's clearly lack one. There is a realm of existence on the edge of consciousness, but it is unstable. I propose that while there may be debate about what hit the historic marker of the first artificial consciousness, that it will be perfectly evident if and when such a thing comes into being.
@antares @fourmajor With a beard though we have a pretty object sense of what a hair, we can identify a hair.. consciousnesses has nothing that is objectively measurable. Even I have no way in my own head, have any way to check to see if in conscious.
@freemo @fourmajor On Second thought, Becky Chambers would be a far better person to write this story, but she is not on social media as far as I know so I'll stick with tagging someone who is.