you are probably right. I knew that my position contains the kind of anthropomorphism that usually gets proven wrong by history. however.. we are in fact talking about technology here not evolution. and yes technological progress is fraught with accident and emergence but to this degree?

I suppose its also just a philosophical discussion because while we can all agree we are conscious.. afaik its not really a scientific term. I don't think we understand scientifically what really defines consciousness. So I think it is likely we may deem our computers conscious because they exhibit the same behaviour that we do, but it doesn't mean they actually possess it. Practically speaking it may not matter, because I think you can have long horizon agency without needing consciousness. just a mechanism for determining goals, which could be as simply as rolling a digital dice or following some original seed of intention left by the creators.

its like the chinese room argument I suppose. the hypothetical chinese room is not conscious but ultimately it doesn't matter. But I don't think anyone would call such a thing conscious.