We can put those machine to better uses than forgetting, having biases, making subtle or gross mistakes (hello, ChatGPT) like we do.
The AI that some apparently consider top-notch today is only good at powering NPCs in video games. The more serious the use-case, the more harmful it becomes.
Moreover, achieving artificial consciousness is only good at fueling endless debates about whether it fakes it perfectly or it is the real thing.
[1] I can imagine a few roles with relationship-building where expressing consciousness could be useful, but IMHO for all of them faking consciousness would be far preferable than actually having it.
Replacement of human labor on the cheap, the most capital intensive part of many businesses. Alternatively as a productivity multiplier of human labor.
OpenAI loves to talk revenue but I'd like to hear more about their unit economics.
The one area I've seen it work great for in meeting transcripts and summaries, but that's not a convincing use case if you're losing money every time a user uses the service.
Related, but LLMs are the ultimate example of humans following the tradition of the Timaeus and imitating the demiurgos - the divine crafter, as the gods did when they crafted the demigods, as the demigods did when they crafted us, and as we do when we craft machine intelligence. Neo-platonism engaged with this idea a long time ago.
As often, the definition of "recognize" is definitely circular so it seems that it is the "real root" for "knowledge", while "conscious" seems to have an "analysis" flavor.
IMO, "understanding" is synonym to intelligence, and the ability to analyze is one keep part of it (another is the ability to recombine). So it seems that we can agree that "without consciousness there can be no understanding", although we moved away a bit from the common meaning of "conscious".
Having biases or making subtle mistakes is not really desirable, it's just that we haven't figured out how to have something that can reason without those things.