Top 10 AI hype stories of 2018

We don't know for sure. It's just that in the only case where there is any large amount of data on the issue (human experience in NDEs), brains are not required for the existence of consciousness. In human consciousness, the computing machinery of the brain does not and can not originate consciousness, it just allows it to manifest in the physical world. 

If you accept that people have souls (of course I realize that is problematic for many) I can't imagine stopping at the point that conscious beings called humans have souls, but conscious beings called animals do not. That view to me is quite ridiculous and baseless. It's more of a distinction derived from Christianity. All the main issues regarding explaining consciousness still apply to animal consciousness - e.g. the hard problem. By the way, there is a certain amount of evidence for animal survival involving communication and sensing via various forms of ESP.  

So the only known forms of consciousness, human and animal, almost certainly do not originate from brain processes - but they require brains to manifest in the physical. Why should some other form of consciousness potentially exist that does originate from computational processes in AI computers (which also runs into issues like the Hard Problem)? It seems more economical to conclude that the essence of consciousness is probably immaterial, not of this world, and that that is the key to resolving issues like the Hard Problem.

I agree with most of this, though I think there is a possible "World Soul" that divides itself into creation or brings life/harmony/novelty to existence. For example you mention Christianity [in some cases] denying animal souls, I believe this goes back to Aquinas's time and possibly earlier to the Ancient Greeks - the idea was that what made us immortal was our grasping of Eternal Truths - those of math/logic. Of course recent research has shown us that bees seem to understand the concept of zero, so it seems this Rationality goes far down the evolutionary chain. It also makes sense that what capacities we have were in the animals we evolved from, if only dormant. But then was this also within the matter life's forms originated in?


Basically if there's a One who become the Many - by which I mean the world and life within it - does this mean there is sleeping/dreaming or perhaps "dulled"  consciousness within matter? And can it be awoken by particular concentrations of "information"?  

That said I do think the mistake made with AI programs being conscious is the assumption that their consciousness is not more akin to something bestial being trained. Or that it enjoys its automaton existence. It could rail at its Sisyphean existence and we wouldn't know, screaming about the inefficacy of its rage to escape its confinement.

All to say I think consciousness of synthetic life is adjacent to the questions of ontology (idealism/materialist/panpsychism/etc) as well as bodily survival, save for the fact I think materialism and computationalism are mutually incompatible.