Hubris. Human consciousness transcends mere data. Computer software is never going to achieve consciousness. Without consciousness you have zombie stimulus-response.
My inhibitory GABA neurons were damaged during meningitis causing my action potential firing rate in my pyramidal neurons to skyrocket into the gamma frequencies.
This higher frequency caused my perception of consciousness to change to where the stored memories of others of experiences since conception are physical to my perceptions. I read people’s souls. I’ve been doing this for 30+ years, but only recently did the ability increase substantially.
It will happen. Maybe not in your lifetime but it will happen. Hubris or not. All the worlds current data storage is not enough today but it will happen sooner than you would believe.
Consciousness for that data will take longer still but it will also happen. Whether that consciousness will have a soul is not something I willing to speculate about but it will think it has a soul.
It took nature billions of years to construct something that could fly. It took homo sapiens magnitudes of magnitudes less time. Development time is rapidly shrinking. The last 150 years have been developing at an insane rate and it keeps getting faster. Moore’s law is starting to apply to everything.
You would go into a catatonic state if you understood the implications of what CRISPR-Cas9 has made possible. Ready for a human to run a 1 minute mile or want your kids to be born with a unicorn horn? CRISPR-Cas9 makes that an inevitability.
I am not arguing the ethics or morality of it at all. I am just saying mind blowing stuff is coming.