I see people talking all the time about how machines can't be conscious, but yet, animals are just machines themselves, so what gives?
It's religious I think. People just want to be special. Not only as individuals, but also as a species.
This is different from outputting random single value output. Typically people tend to use generic or vague terms rather than mismatch, which is very different from what ML does.
We can also output that we're not certain. And we can use surrounding context on a way current ML cannot.
The neuron either reaches a threshold to fire, or it does not. On or off.
In comparison, DNN are an abacus level of simplicity.
If we can mathematically model it, then we can use 1's and 0's to do so. What you are suggesting is that how we think and observe the world with our brains is not mathematically possible. If that's the case, then Math is wrong, or at best: an approximation to the universe.
Implication: Consciousness exists in the gap between the universe and math.