"Consciousness" is an overloaded thought killer that swerves all conversation into obfuscated semantic arguments. One person will be talking about 'internality' and self-image (in the testable, mechanical sense that you could argue Chain of Thought models already have in a petty way) and the other will be grappling with the concept of qualia and the ineffable nature of human experience.
That's not even a devil's advocate, many other animals clearly have consciousness, at least if we're not solipsistic. There have been many very dangerous precedents in medicine where people have been declared "brain dead" only to awake and remember.
Since consciousness is closely linked to being a moral patient, it is all the more important to err on the side of caution when denying qualia to other beings.
AI has traditionally been driven by "metaphor-driven development" where people assume the brain has system X, program something they give the same name, and then assume because they've given it that name it must work because it works in the brain.
This is generally a bad idea, but a few of the results like "neural networks" did work out… eventually.
"World model" is another example of a metaphor like this. They've assumed that humans have world models (most likely not true), and that if they program something and call it a "world model" it will work the same way (definitely not true) and will be beneficial (possibly true).
(The above critique comes from Phil Agre and David Chapman.)
What's with this insane desire for anthropomorphism? What do you even MEAN learn in its dreams? Fine-tuning overnight? Just say that!