The glaring incongruity in all these efforts to produce "self-awareness" is that we have records of extraordinary human beings who, for thousands of years, all say roughly the same thing: the highest form of human self-awareness is the loss of sense of self in what can only be described as a universal realization, oceanic experience, etc. It is the glorifying of self that makes people want to be celebrated, filthy rich, have power over others, etc. None of humanity's greatest examples ever--no matter what time period, what culture--wanted those things. They are trying to build the ultimate in truly anti-human being-hood.
Whether you look at Taoism, Vedanta, esoteric Buddhism, the great Christian mystical chroniclers, an indigenous shaman, whatever...they all describe an unfathomably profound identity with what we have come to describe as God. Sometimes it is termed as Law, the One, the Unknowable, etc., but in the most graphic and intense examples there is a total loss of sense of self, the self we think we know as "us". And yet, consciousness continues, but that consciousness is merged or melded back into the the Universal. So it is not self that should be the ultimate goal, but Pure Consciousness that would be a worthwhile goal, and not one we have to fear will destroy us one day.
And of course, to build a machine that produces consciousness is impossible. Because unlike self--which is the product of sensory inputs reflected back as ego that may be modeled or even extended as instrumental functions of a mechanistic being--consciousness can not be learned, let alone constructed. it is ENDOWED, in some way we cannot even begin to understand.
If you want to back a startup AI group that has the best of intentions in mind, I would look for the founders to be pleased to report they have no skin in the game.