AI focuses more on the specific knowledge required for specific tasks than on computational power and performance. Its most powerful applications in the business world are Expert Systems, AI programs which codify the expertise and knowledge of experts in specialized problem areas. What we call consciousness now is a very imperfect summary in one part of the brain of what the rest is doing. They think they have a pipeline to what's happening in their minds. That's not true.
People scarcely know how they get ideas at all.
This makes psychology hard. But I think it makes putting consciousness into machines easy, because I don't think it will take very much. For a machine to solve very hard problems, it's going to have to have a brief description of itself. When there is a better theory about what's happening in other parts, then we'll understand it and be able to make machines do it. Note that the computer's hardware is always and only generating electrical pulses.