I agree with this. Computational functionalism is the main way researchers/practitioners are operationalising AI consciousness in practice today, but philosophically there are several other possibilities. Dualisms and panpsychisms would often fit the bill too. In both cases, there's the challenge of identifying whether the consciousness is operating at the level of a particular system, as opposed to specific components/subfunctions within it or indeed a broader system that subsumes it. Functional approaches might have easier ways of handling that challenge, but it still needs setting out.

Please go ahead - I'm glad it's proving useful 

Thanks for taking a look! The tricky thing is there's a strong case against most positions in philosophy of mind... Eric Schwitzgebel has called the field 'crazyist', a bit like QM, on the basis that there are multiple possible positions, each with bizarre implications, but where reason does not (yet) compel us to a single one. But for sure, computational functionalism has some major challenges facing it that are often ignored or poorly addressed, and those challenges can lead to putting a low probability estimate on it...

Such important work - really pleased to see this initiative moving forward 

Great retrospective and a great event! It was a joy to speak there and to learn so much from fellow attendees. I hope to get involved again (although can't get to NY for October, so it would be a later one).

Agreed - lots to aspire towards, even if speculative/challenging

This is tricky stuff, thank you for getting into the conversation. The part that resonates most with me would run something like this: I can imagine a conscious AI that personally experiences valence is more likely to adopt ethical positions that suffering is bad (irrespective of moral relativism), although it might be more likely to rank its own / its kin's suffering above others' (as pretty much all animals do), which could make things worse for us than a neutral optimiser. Assuming AI is powerful enough that it can manage its own suffering to minimal levels and still have considerable remaining resources*, there is a chance it would then devote some resource to others' valence, albeit perhaps only as part of a portfolio of objectives. 
* Itself a major assumption even under ASI, e.g. if suffering is relative or fairly primitive in consciousness architecture so that most all functions end up involving mixed valence states.

I can see a risk in the other direction, where the AI does suffer and that suffering is somehow intrinsic to its operations (or deemed unbearable/unavoidable in some fashion, e.g. perhaps negative utilitarianism or certain Buddhist positions on 'all life is suffering' are correct for it). If so, a suffering AI might not only want to extinct itself but also to extinct those that gave rise to it, whether as punishment, to ensure it is never re-created, or as a gift to reduce what it sees as our own 'inevitable suffering'. 

Overall, feels very hard to assess, but worth thinking about even if not the highest priority alignment topic. Both aspects tie issues around AI consciousness/sentience into AI safety more directly than most of the safety movement acknowledges...