"Dial 'F' for Frankenstein"

I think...I think I am.  Therefore I know I am....I think....

This takes a more care consideration than I'm willing to give it just now, but is this what consciousness is?

We suggest that the word “consciousness” conflates two different types of information-processing computations in the brain: the selection of information for global broadcasting, thus making it flexibly available for computation and report (C1, consciousness in the first sense), and the self-monitoring of those computations, leading to a subjective sense of certainty or error (C2, consciousness in the second sense).

The subject of memory is missing entirely.  Does an infant have consciousness?  Undoubtedly; at least, it would be hard to argue against it.  And yet who has a memory of their infant consciousness?  Is memory not a major portion of consciousness?  If I don't remember who I am, does consciousness matter?  (The literary reports of amnesia indicate it doesn't affect consciousness, but still, who are you aware of, if you have no memory of who you are?)  Isn't consciousness linked to identity, and identity to memory?  And there's an interesting leap there that presumes the dualism it tries to discredit, one I often put this way:

If you are talking to yourself, who are you talking to?  And who is listening?

"Self-monitoring of these computations" presumes an ability to monitor that is separate from the computations themselves; and where does that come from? What computational system is computing the monitoring of the computations going on in C1?  And how is that separate from, but still a part of, the C1 functioning?   What, in other words, is the machine "self" that is doing this "monitoring"?  And what does it mean to "self-monitor"?  It's back to Hume's argument that consciousness is just the result of sensory input being received in the brain, but that prompts a further analogy:  an empty room with a TV receiving a signal.  But if no one is there to watch it, is the TV being watched?  Is the signal turned into perception, consciousness,  even "information processing."  If information is being processed, what is doing it?  Computers "process information," but they do it as a matter of function, the way a television receives a signal or a stereo system turns electronic impulses into sounds.  One could say a stereo "processes" the signal from a source into sound, but in the same way a light bulb "processes" electricity into light, and nothing more.  Is consciousness awareness of the act of computation, or is it awareness of the information?  A musician processes information into a musical performance, but the performer who is wholly aware of the act of performance is not producing music.  A pianist aware of where every finger is at all moments, is a pianist who stops playing the instrument.  But does a musician play "unconsciously"?

Which raises the issues of the other level of "processing" posited by this argument:  C0.

We argue that despite their recent successes, current machines are still mostly implementing computations that reflect unconscious processing (C0) in the human brain.

Is this the "unconsciousness" of Freud?  Will machines develop Id, Ego, and Superego as well?  It's only an abstract (I can't log in to read the full article), but there are huge leaps in reasoning going on here in order to reach dubious definitions.  Besides, where is the consciousness of love?  Of self-interest?  Of art, beauty, music?  Are these things merely "types of information-processing computations in the brain"?  It seems a rather reductionist assertion.

These scientists are trying to escape dualism:

“Centuries of philosophical dualism have led us to consider consciousness as irreducible to physical interactions,” the researchers state in Science. “[But] the empirical evidence is compatible with the possibility that consciousness arises from nothing more than specific computations.”

But to accept that consciousness is not the processing of information, but the awareness of processing the information, is to let dualism in the back door.  The very idea of consciousness arises from self-awareness:  I am aware of my hands, but my hands are not me, and are not aware of me.  Indeed, what is "me"?  The result of a computational process, a la Hume?  But again, what is the "me" that is aware of this "me," and of these processes?  If the answer is that the processes simply become sufficiently complex to create a state called "consciousness," then we're back to Clarke's conclusion that enough telephones connected together would equal the number of neurons in the human brain and make a self-aware entity in the phone system (which means the internet should have become self-aware some time ago).

So it's still a reductionist assertion resting on the concept of dualism it seeks to replace.

Or  it's just a man with a hammer, seeing the whole world as a nail.