Is it possible for a machine to become conscious? What is consciousness in the first place? Will we ever be able to find a way to determine whether a machine is conscious or not?
The authors build their paper on several tenets, one of them being that computational functionalism is true, meaning that "performing computations of the right kind is necessary and sufficient for consciousness". It's important to note that their assessment of whether AI can become conscious builds upon a theory that entails this to be "possible in principle". As the authors remark, rivalling views of consciousness does not necessarily assume this to be possible.