Look at an average reddit thread and tell me how much original thought there is. I'm fairly convinced you can generate 95% of comments with no loss of quality.

I'm not seeing as much fear about a ghost in the shell as much as I am job displacement, which is a real scenario that can play out regardless of an AI having consciousness.

Why is the barrier for so many "consciousness"? Why does it matter whether it's conscious or not if its pragmatic functionality builds use cases that disrupt social contracts (we soon can't trust text, audio OR video - AND we can have human-like text deployed at incredible speed and effectivity), the status quo itself (job displacement), legal statutes and charter (questioning copyright law), and even creativity/self-expression (see: Library of Babel).

When all of this is happening from an unconscious being, why do I care if it's unconscious?

AI doesn't have to be conscious to cause massive job displacement. It has to be artificially intelligent, not artificially conscious. Intelligence and consciousness are not the same.

We have no idea what consciousness is. Therefore we have no way to determine if AI is or is not.