Do you think AI is, or could become, conscious?

I think AI might one day emulate consciousness to a high level of accuracy, but that wouldn’t mean it would actually be conscious.

This article mentions a Google engineer who “argued that AI chatbots could feel things and potentially suffer”. But surely in order to “feel things” you would need a nervous system right? When you feel pain from touching something very hot, it’s your nerves that are sending those pain signals to your brain… right?