How to know if a machine can gain consciousness:

1. Write a simulation environment like conway's game of life, perhaps a little more complicated. But leave out any human bias.

2. Run it until life starts to form.

3. Wait until the creatures start speaking about the concept of consciousness (of course in their own language, which you'll have to decipher first).

The way Amodei did it is with human bias, so it's not going to work.