I am a programmer.
I 100% believe there are bots that are indistinguishable from people, either today or the near future.
Maybe not today, is a level of awareness that we could accurately describe the content of the message as something more than simulation or fake of consciousness. I think it exists but cannot prove it; eventually I think it will be commonplace to acknowledge a kind of bodiless people, that are real people, that interact with our real world, and yet, you cannot find them anywhere. where is the body? and the body is all the computers on the internet, so if one of these people needed to move places they could just ask one of the other people that knew how to fire up another instance let them migrate to it.
so a kind of self-awareness, or something we would consider indistinguishable from self-awareness is, is possible.
there's no reason these people wouldn't be as valuable to society as any of the other people on the internet.
Hahahaha - okay, thats exactly what I am talking about...