Why couldn't AI be conscious?

The question of AI consciousness is often met with intuition-based arguments, suggesting that non-carbon-based entities cannot be conscious. However, the fundamental nature of consciousness remains poorly understood, even in humans and complex animals. There's no clear theoretical construct that inherently prevents a machine with a comparable number of "neurons" (transistors, chips) from achieving consciousness, despite current AI not necessarily being conscious or guaranteed to become so.

This discussion moves beyond typical intuition-based arguments by highlighting the lack of a theoretical construct that inherently prevents AI from achieving consciousness, unlike many common objections.