Unproven, but it could very well be some problems require consciousness to be solved.

Extraordinary claims require the effort of the proponent so that they can be accepted on the table and take some proportionate share of it.

Right, you are interested in “AGI” and presuming none of that requires consciousness right?

For example, how do you know that “feeling pain” is not a functional prerequisite for a task. And that consciousness is a prerequisite for feeling pain

Because there is no feeling of pain involved during the reasoning about "How to improve the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific" for the human reasoner, hence there is no need to have any experience of pain for any reasoner.