The tricky part is that while we don't know what it is, we do know that it's not some specific part. It's an emergent property of some arrangement of non-conscious parts, independent of whether those parts are meat or sand. Can a GAN develop consciousness in any meaningful way? No, but the idea of consciousness emerging from a computer isn't entirely unthinkable, it's just unlikely.
The tricky part is that while we don't know what it is, we do know that it's not some specific part. It's an emergent property of some arrangement of non-conscious parts, independent of whether those parts are meat or sand. Can a GAN develop consciousness in any meaningful way? No, but the idea of consciousness emerging from a computer isn't entirely unthinkable, it's just unlikely.