Do you think AIs can be conscious?

Yesterday, Microsoft's Majorana 1 was launched here, a prototype of a quantum processor powered by topological qubits, a breakthrough that may enable quantum computers capable of solving real-world problems that are intractable with classical computers.

As @chrismessina and @terrence_kelleman mentioned, some scientists believe that quantum effects give rise to consciousness, including the mathematician, physicist and philosopher Roger Penrose (Nobel prize 2020).

However, most scientists seem to believe that quantum effects are not relevant to information processing in the brain, and many AI researchers (e.g. Ray Kurzweil) think it will be possible to create generally intelligent robots that behave completely as if they were conscious (using classical processors), and then argue that we would then have to assume that they are indeed conscious, just like we do with other humans.

Whether / which AIs or robots are or will be conscious, and if they can suffer, is of course a crucial question because of the ethical implications (the next question then would be if people will even care, considering the staggering indifference towards the suffering of animals).

All the below options are compatible with our current scientific knowledge (and there are further possibilities). What do you believe?

Do you think we will ever find out for sure?

The problem is of course that it is impossible to “measure” consciousness directly from the outside. We should be aware that we can't even proof that other people are conscious (the possibility of zombies is not as far-fetched as most people think: If we live in simulated reality, which some very intelligent people think is probable, whoever runs the simulation may have decided for computational or ethical reasons not to simulate all people in a way that they are conscious).