Is there a definition of consciousness? The gist is that people are dishonest when they claim they have a conscious program or robot. The notion that a program causes consciousness is not well defended. Suppose I have a program X which is conscious and let it be written down. Does it get conscious if a billion people execute it in parallel? It is not clear what is conscious in this case. (Searle's Argument)

It's just not very interesting. It would be the same to say "I give you 1 billion dollars if you write me a program that does hhfdsodifiuuiuuuttueeertz", without saying what "hhfdsodifiuuiuuuttueeertz" is. Saying "no machine can be conscious" is equivalent to saying "no machine is hhfdsodifiuuiuuuttueeertz".

I am not even sure it would be dishonest to take the money. It is kind of insulting to give such a task, so maybe it would serve the sponsor right. After all, the sponsor would be unable to prove that the program is not conscious.

Suppose I submit a program that does nothing than print "the weather is nice" on the screen. Who is to say the machine is not conscious? It could be all sorts of self-aware, but for personal reasons decide to communicate nothing but "the weather is nice" to the outside world.

>It's just not very interesting. It would be the same to say "I give you 1 billion dollars if you write me a program that does hhfdsodifiuuiuuuttueeertz", without saying what "hhfdsodifiuuiuuuttueeertz" is. Saying "no machine can be conscious" is equivalent to saying "no machine is hhfdsodifiuuiuuuttueeertz".

Then, saying your weather-printing machine is conscious is equivalent to saying that is hhfdsodifiuuiuuuttueeertz which of course means nothing. But a lay person will really think that machine is conscious.

If you say your machine is conscious, then you must show it is conscious rather than just claim it is conscious. I can print "I travel faster than light" and claim that is a proof of faster than light travel to a lay person who will believe me. That is what is happening today in consciousness and AI research.

Just cause you can't see the earth is round directly does not mean it is not spherical. There should atleast be an indirect way, otherwise it is not Science :).

Except that "it is conscious" is not a hypothesis, because it doesn't mean anything. That is the whole point: the whole task doesn't contain any testable bits.