i think it's still an open question how "conscious" that infants and newborns are. It really depends on how you define it and it is probably a continuum of some kind.
This is well documented fact, in the medical and cognitive science fields: humans consciousness fade away as their neurons are reduced/malformed/misfunctioning.
You can trivially demonstrate it in any healthy individual using oxygen starvation.
There's no one neuron that results in any definition of human consciousness, which requires that it's a continuum.
I haven't publicly stated this before now: Consciousness requires the ability to perceive PAIN.
All human learning is based upon the single kernel of pain (vs pleasure).
A newborn is hungry or cold and cried. It learned to cry. It learned to smile. Eventually, delayed gratification lead to less pain (more pleasure).
The rest is human history.
As our brains mature, we learn how to predict our environments in ways to maximize pleasure, and avoid pain (grossly oversimplified). We learn more about others, what works, and what doesn't.
An AI also learns from feedback, but is it ever perceiving anything?
I think the jist of the article is that we will use whatever definition of consciousness is useful to us, for any given use case
Much the same way treat pigs vs dogs, based on how hungry or cute we feel.