In philosophy of mind, self-consciousness is separate from qualia, although some might argue that to be self-conscious, a being must have qualia. Qualia meaning what it's like to be in some mental state. Seeing a color has a color quale, which means there is an experience of color. Or better yet, we experience a colored-in world when we see (or dream, remember, visualize). Does any current AI have some mental experience?

For us, there's something it's like to be self-conscious, just like there's some experience that goes with our thoughts, such as inner dialog (hearing your thoughts). For some, that might be mental imagery instead of internal sound.

At any rate, it's the various feels that make up our experience of being a self in the world, or a self reflecting on itself.

>I don’t see how consciousness is at all hard to define. A system that is aware of itself.

A thermostat that is aware of the temperature inside its own housing is "aware of itself". It's not conscious however.

Nailing down exactly what consciousness means is remarkably difficult.

Honestly I think this is largely because humans want the conclusion that only they are consious, or at least that only they and some animals are, and are trying really hard to carve out a definition that makes that work. Why would we do that? Well obviously because we create AI to do work for us and we don't want to have any ethical considerations get in the way of treating our new slaves however we want.

Yup this is my thinking also. It isn’t a hard concept imo people just like theologizing about why they’re special

I would think that...

1) awareness, even without a sense of self, would still count as consciousness, and

2) describing consciousness in terms of awareness doesn't help to define it, since awareness is a subjective experience that cannot be shared directly