The ideal outcome for science isn't a couple of labs using proprietary models and millions of dollars to crack trophy problems, it's to have millions of AI-aided human scientists who follow their curiosity and become way more ambitious

Arguing that "consciousness arises from a computational substrate, and since AI models are computation, they are likely conscious," is as meaningless as arguing that "living creatures are made of atoms, and since this rock is made of atoms, it is likely alive." Everything is computation. Sometimes incredibly sophisticated computation, like a chess engine, AlphaGo, google3, or the Linux kernel. That does not make it conscious. A rock being made of atoms does not confer it any of the properties we associate with living things, also made of atoms. Likewise a static input-output program that has *none* of the properties we associate with conscious beings (e.g. information integration, interoception, temporal binding, embodiment, etc.) has no more reason to be presumed conscious than a rock has to be presumed alive. Humanity has not yet created a conscious computer program, and there are no signs we are close to doing so. When we get close, the case for machine consciousness will be backed by evidence and corroborated by consciousness science (which is a thing), not by evidence-free wishful thinking and cargo culting.