[jammies]

Artificial consciousness is a different, albeit closely related, discussion than artificial intelligence. As I think I've said before, it's could be that you can create a human-level (or better) intelligence without consciousness, nor is it necessarily so that you would *want* consciousness in your AI, even if possible - conscious AI forced to serve is slavery.

Free will is another tangential subject, it's still conjecture that humans have free will, so expecting to prove it exists in an AI seems pointless. Regardless of the philosophical arguments for and against, the only real way to know would be to continue development and experimentation, as there is nothing like proving an argument right or wrong by demonstration.

I find many of the authors, like Kurzweil, who speak on this subject are equally mystical when talking about our progress in this area as the most medieval Catholic apologists and quoters of Aristotle among us. We just don't know enough yet to do more than wave hands around in the air and speak in generalities, someone needs to come up with a theory of intelligence - not necessarily mathematical, but more like the theory of evolution - that explains enough about the processes and laws of it to make meaningful predictions and assertions possible.