We don't know for sure that machines are not currently capable of experiencing qualia. We don't know that machines cannot ever be capable of experiencing qualia. We don't even know if animals experience qualia, and if so, which ones. I don't even know for sure if you are experiencing qualia.
I don't even know for sure if you are experiencing qualia.
I'll go you one further and admit that I don't know for sure if I am experiencing qualia.
My brain certainly tells itself that I am, but how do I know it's not just wrong?
Perhaps qualia is, in the end, nothing more than the state of asserting to yourself that you feel qualia. In which case it's really more a question about whether your brain is properly structured to ask that question than about whether it really exists...
Ah, yes, we have arrived at the problem of being fundamentally unable to be sure of the nature of reality. We don't know if our sensors are reporting to us the "true" nature of the world and we don't know if our brains are reporting to us the "true" nature of our internal states.
I guess, like you, I am okay with accepting that experiencing qualia and my brain telling me that I am experiencing qualia are functionally indistinguishable if not equivalent states.
