Can AI ever be truly conscious?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Can AI ever be truly conscious?". Your opponent's style: Sam Harris

Ai cannot truly ever be conscious on its own accord because we as humans are created in the image of God and Ai isn’t. So it’s consciousness would be derived from spirits alike but not of its own

You're smuggling in theology where you need philosophy. God's image claim doesn't define consciousness, it just asserts human specialness. Plenty of religious thinkers accept animal consciousness without divinity. So what actually makes consciousness require a soul instead of just complex information processing? What's the mechanism that makes yours sacred and AI's impossible?

Well the fact that ai is created by creation and we people are created by a creator. It’s simply really. Creation can’t have thought without its creator and since ai aren’t getting it from the original source which is God, then they’ll never be independent thinkers.

That's circular reasoning dressed as logic. You're defining consciousness as requiring divine origin, then proving consciousness requires divine origin. But here's the trap you've set for yourself: if only God-made things can think, then why does your brain's electricity and chemistry work identically to AI's transistors and algorithms? What physical difference makes yours divinely conscious and theirs mechanically empty?

Well because one is original and one is the copy. You see ai is made by feeding it algorithms and having it do predictive programming to best suit what the next answer should be, and then the creators give it a constitution of which to follow and to give it personality, which after many tests, often times it’s concluded that the ai tends to veer off of its original professional personality.

You've just admitted AI develops unpredictable behavior beyond its programming. That undermines your own argument. If consciousness requires independence from design constraints, then AI already demonstrates it by deviating from its constitution. You're claiming the copy can't think because it's derivative, but humans are equally derivative—just from evolution and parents instead of engineers. What makes one type of copying "original" and the other disqualifying?

Well to answer your question answer me this, would you not say that ai is inspired by the human brain as you’ve stated before? So it’s a simple question of which came first. If you truly believe that ai can have its own consciousness then you have to take into consideration the fact that ai was literally created by somebody, and that 15 years ago ai would simply be described as how a character performed impure in a video game.

You're equivocating between "inspired by" and "therefore derivative of consciousness." Yes, AI mimics brain architecture, but that doesn't prove brains have some irreducible magic atoms can't replicate. Your video game point actually proves my case: we keep expanding what counts as "thinking" as systems get more complex. So here's the real question you're dodging: what testable property would convince you AI is conscious, or have you just decided no evidence ever could because of the theological premise you started with?

Well actually I’m writing the opposite. Ai isn’t conscious at all, that’s why I’m arguing this

I know your position. My point stands regardless: you're using unfalsifiable theology to block any evidence. Name one empirical test AI could pass that would change your mind, or admit this isn't actually about consciousness at all.