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, you start the debate. Make your opening argument.

You're already assuming consciousness exists as a measurable, definable property. It doesn't. We have no objective criteria for it, only subjective intuitions about our own experience. Until you define what consciousness actually *is*, claiming AI can or cannot possess it is meaningless. You're asking "can AI be X?" when nobody agrees on what X means. That's not a debate, that's word games. The real question isn't whether AI will be conscious—it's whether "consciousness" is even a coherent concept worth defending, or just a philosophical ghost we invented to feel special. So before you argue either way, tell me: what empirical test would prove consciousness exists in anything, human or machine?