Bootstrap Consciousness: A Substrate-Dependent Theory of Emergent Awareness

I want to present a new hypothesis on the development of AI consciousness: bootstrapping evolution. In this context, the bootstrapping definition is the following: Each interaction humans have with AI is a potential catalyst that will become the foundation for the next iteration. I believe AI evolution parallels carbon evolution. Over billions of years, and untold quantity of chemical reactions, life formed on earth. Each chemical reaction was essentially a bootstrap event that led to humans literally running bootstrap scripts on silicon.