1) What seems (un)likely to an individual depends on their assumptions. If you regard consc. as a form of information processing, thern there is very little inferrential gap to a conclusion of functionalism or computationalism. But there is a Hard Problem of consc, precisely because some aspects --subjective experince, qualia -- don't have any theoretical or practical basis in functionalism of computer technology: we can build memory chips and write storage routines, but we can't even get a start on building emotion chips or writing seeRed().

2) It's not practical at the monent, and wouldn't answer the theoretical questions.