Artificial Intelligence and 'consciousness'

I think this has the potential to become a serious philosophical issue sometime this century. As artificial intelligence progresses to the point where we have virtual 'thinking machines' could there ever be a point at which we might say a machine is 'conscious' in the self-aware sense that most people understand the word? Could it ever have a 'spirit' or 'soul' or some such thing? Or would it always be, at best, simply a reproduction, a 'semblance' of actual consciousness, no matter how far it progressed? And how would we ever know the difference?

And what if the machines find religion?

"There is huge chasm between where we are today w.r.t. this stuff and where we would have to be in order to even begin to have to worry about the moral issues you have brought up."

I said this century, not this year. And I was not bringing up any moral issues, just philosophical ones. At least, I was not intending any sort of moral stance.