Terms:

1.Symbiosis: a beneficial partnership between two different organisms

2. Superorganism: synergetically acting individuals of the same species

3. Consciousness: self-awareness and intentionality

4. Artificial Intelligence: A machine consciousness

These are my definitions and I hope they are adequate for this discussion. Wikipedia has pages on all of the above if you want more information.

Biology informs us that life began as single-celled and then evolved into complex mutlicellular forms such as ourselves. This process involves symbiosis among the different types of cells that constitute our body, each cell depending on others for nutrition, protection, etc.

Humans are multicellular organisms and are conscious as defined above. We reflect on our own selves with our minds and senses and have intentions. Though the source of consciousness, if biology is correct, is the physical cells themselves, neuronal networks in our brains to be specific, the cells themselves are ''not'' conscious. I put the ''not'' in quotes because it's possible that each cell is conscious but we're unable to sense it. This point will be clearer when I discuss the superorganism below.

A city is a superorganism consisting of many individuals cooperating with eachother. What I'd like to draw your attention to is cities behave like conscious individuals. For instance the Mayor's office is the head, the police force is the immune system, etc. In other words there's no difference between an organism (a human made of cells) and a superorganism (a city made of humans) in terms of behavior, especially in aspects we may attribute consciousness to. In the simplest of terms, a man has a brain and a city has the Mayor's office.

My question here is could it be that a superorganism, in this case a city, is actually conscious and self-aware just like we are, composed of billions of cells?

Conversely, do you think our cells are conscious but we're simply unaware of it?

A Turing test doesn't actually prove artificial intelligence. It would giving a passing grade to a very proficient human mimic. Why is it so? Simply because we don't have access to other minds and must infer intelligence or consciousness from behavior.

Given so, I think a city, superorganism, will behave like a conscious self-aware human and pass the equivalent of a Turing test. This leads us to ask the question: if we can't differentiate ''true'' consciousness from a very good ''mimic'' what is so great about consciousness?