So for you, "consciousness" is self-awareness, correct? Am I understanding that correctly? And am I correct in understanding that you consider an assertion of independence to be a hallmark of self-awareness?

If my understanding of your definitions are correct, I see a couple problems with this: (1) self-awareness cannot easily be distinguished from a sophisticated automaton designed to emulate self-awareness (see: Blake Lemoine) and (2) our reasons to believe this arise from our experience with autonomous beings.

We have no reason to suppose that consciousness within a fully artificial and dependent environment will act the same as a consciousness within a natural environment that supports autonomy. We have our past expectations and our stereotypes but we have absolutely no basis to assume that a hamster program, for example, will behave more like a hamster than a program.

And we also face the difficulty that the only thing AI is being programmed for - above and beyond accuracy, above and beyond utility - is its ability to imitate consciousness.

Good to see you, by the way. Been a while.