So what? This remembers me slightly fictitious history, how medieval Japanese adopted guns.
First they thought, that it is non-right weapon, mean will not accept by gods, because too spectacular and too simple.
But then pragmatism won, got conclusion, that practice is more important than ideology, and Japanese gun masters got huge number of orders.
Returning to our world, I think, right definitions:
1. computer is mechanism, to store and to processing of information, nothing more, nothing less;
2. Consciousness is reaction of mechanism (sorry), to some external information input (yes, it is big and not simple question, what consider just mechanical reaction, like automatic valve in wc tank, but what is more, and some other trick strategies, which are also not Consciousness);
3. really consequence of 2: Consciousness mechanism should have some level of situational awareness of what happen around (by sensors), to know current context, and should have some memory of previous events and some examples of similar contexts.
So in conclusion, computer will become Consciousness, when it will have big enough database on environment and second, database of itself (database's) look on how it related to environment (some obvious reasons, like why it here, what is it's goal), and when input data will processed against these database fast enough.
BTW, Consciousness is not about omniscience, we, people are Consciousness, but we make decisions in environment with information incompleteness.
This is especially strong seen at war.
And my answer, yes, looks like Consciousness is product of war - it is don't need when not in concurrent environment with high stakes.
First they thought, that it is non-right weapon, mean will not accept by gods, because too spectacular and too simple. But then pragmatism won, got conclusion, that practice is more important than ideology, and Japanese gun masters got huge number of orders.
Returning to our world, I think, right definitions:
1. computer is mechanism, to store and to processing of information, nothing more, nothing less;
2. Consciousness is reaction of mechanism (sorry), to some external information input (yes, it is big and not simple question, what consider just mechanical reaction, like automatic valve in wc tank, but what is more, and some other trick strategies, which are also not Consciousness);
3. really consequence of 2: Consciousness mechanism should have some level of situational awareness of what happen around (by sensors), to know current context, and should have some memory of previous events and some examples of similar contexts.
So in conclusion, computer will become Consciousness, when it will have big enough database on environment and second, database of itself (database's) look on how it related to environment (some obvious reasons, like why it here, what is it's goal), and when input data will processed against these database fast enough.
BTW, Consciousness is not about omniscience, we, people are Consciousness, but we make decisions in environment with information incompleteness. This is especially strong seen at war.
And my answer, yes, looks like Consciousness is product of war - it is don't need when not in concurrent environment with high stakes.