There's a credible argument that we're just strongly overestimating what consciousness is.
I don't think AI is conscious. But it processes information and comes up with an output that's often dumb, obvious or not really on topic and then rarely kinda cool - just like humans do. It doesn't have a will, but most experts agree that free will is scientifically impossible, even if many think we should just pretend that it's real. AI doesn't have the feeling of subjective experience, but that's not really very important - we could still see a red light, understand what it means and execute appropriate bevahiour if we lacked the subjective experience of seeing the color red.
AI is not conscious, similarly to how a ventilator is not human lungs. It's not, but it's still doing mostly the same thing.
