If the brain is a quantum computer then it could impact AI in two possible ways. First, there may be something that a quantum computer can do that a digital computer cannot do thereby making human level AI via digital computer impossible even in principle. Second, maybe a digital computer could in principle do whatever a quantum computer can do except given that quantum computation is so much faster than digital computation that in practice the digital computer would never be able to compete. In either case the grand goal of making a computer roughly equal to a human being would have to await the construction of quantum computers as complex as the brain. Consciousness Consciousness is an unexplained phenomenon.
People have it and it is generally believed that higher level animals have it.
Some people speculate that we will only have true artificial intelligence if the system is conscious, meaning that digital computers will never be able to do all that conscious people can do. The idea that quantum mechanical waves and fields could be responsible for consciousness goes back to the 1920s and was suggested by at least physicist James Jeans and biologist Alfred Lotka. There are a number of different quantum mechanical approaches to consciousness, too many to try and explain here. The proposal for quantum consciousness that gets the most attention comes from physicist Roger Penrose and physician Stuart Hameroff and it involves the use of microtubules in the brain to support consciousness. Penrose proposes that consciousness comes from an orchestrated collapse of the wave function.