Well, suppose it increases awareness of the threat of AGI, if we can prove that consciousness is not some mystical, supernatural phenomenon. Because it would be more clear that intelligence is just about information processing.
Furthermore, the ethical debate about creating artificial consciousness in a computer (mindcrime issues, etc.) would very shortly become a mainstream issue, I would imagine.
I'm not sure if intelligence and consciousness are one and the same thing, and with your words, consciousness/intelligence is information processing. If you conclude that intelligence is information processing, then this might be an aspect of the body, an attribute, in roughly the same way as consciousness. Then that aspect of the body is evolving in machines, called artificial intelligence, independent of conscious experience.
Consciousness has such a wide variety of states, whether it be mystical, religious experiences, persistent non-symbolic experiences...
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