Artificial Intelligence awakens or woke computer programming?

I came across this story a while ago about the Google engineer who claims that an artificial intelligence (A.I.) bot has developed consciousness.  Duly skeptical I disregarded the story as sensationalism and/or maybe someone wanting their 15 minutes of fame.  It didn't really belong on this blog as it's a bit far afield from politics.  But I've posted on similar topics before because in some sense everything touches on politics, even a little.  There are previous examples here, here and here, among others.  So I thought I'd take a closer look at the story.  

Is this a matter of actual artificial intelligence achieving a state of consciousness and self awareness (or rather artificial consciousness), or is it more about wokeness and the next step for the radical left - computers' rights?  Or maybe just a misinterpretation of the results of the testing? Either way it's worth considering not only from a political perspective but also morality, ethics and technological perspectives. Take a look at this interview.

Interestingly the engineer himself ends up saying it's not really about consciousness but rather Google's dismissiveness of the discussion. His take seems a bit anti-corporate but if I worked for Google I would probably have the same problem.