Even more good thoughts from you! I am not sure what the difference is between soul and awareness. We assume we have souls, but I am unsure. Perhaps awareness can exist without a soul. Even though I have seen ghosts, I am not dead sure what they are. Are they our own understanding of trans dimensional beings? Perhaps time is an illusion as some scientists theorize and some spiritualists believe, and souls escape this time trap? Also, So what if we did clone souls, and the new souls went their own ways...just as identical twins do. Would we then be Gods, since we are creating sentient life? LOL.
I am fairly confident AI will become aware, but....perhaps that is only something a supreme being can do.
i think and believe that time is only something that we have here in our dimension and in our universe. what if there are multiverses that overlap and they have a different time measurement? and if we could get out of the universe, who would it be without time? maybe a never-ending eternity?
I personally differentiate between consciousness and the soul, where both are connected. consciousness is the higher I, which reacts to the outer circumstances and the soul is the inner drive that can decide.
could AI's develop feelings? even understand them? we hardly understand them...