Right, you are interested in “AGI” and presuming none of that requires consciousness right?
For example, how do you know that “feeling pain” is not a functional prerequisite for a task. And that consciousness is a prerequisite for feeling pain
Because there is no feeling of pain involved during the reasoning about "How to improve the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific" for the human reasoner, hence there is no need to have any experience of pain for any reasoner.
For example, how do you know that “feeling pain” is not a functional prerequisite for a task. And that consciousness is a prerequisite for feeling pain