Everyone has different experiences, interests, & focuses in life which determine what they prioritize.
Communities survive & die due to shared desires, understandings, & experiences after all, no matter how quaint or in someone’s eyes, misinformed it may be.
Regardless, I think the AI singularity thing is just the old mindset of we have a problem today, let’s make up a solution because it’s more comfortable to do that than accept the powerlessness of no answer.
I don’t see consciousness as some special mental faut or whatever.
In my mind it’s a social mechanism meant to allow a more nuanced, complex and deliberate reaction to the world around it and it’s community versus a creature purely with instinct.
In my eyes then, we will know that an AI is conscious if overtime it varies it’s actions and reactions based in a way that it assumes will help guarantees its existence and future usefulness versus it’s prompt varying because that’s how X spoke to it 1 million times.
This is actually often done when trying to be more eloquent or dramatic or add importance, like how Independence day is The 4th of July versus just saying Jily 4th.