> it is probably more accurate (and intriguing) to say it is a sign of a higher level of consciousness
More intriguing certainly, more accurate is debatable. Robots can be (and have been) programmed to use tools. That doesn't mean they are conscious. Ants are very sophisticated farmers [1], but they almost certainly are not conscious.
> Robots can be (and have been) programmed to use tools.
If the crows had been programmed to do likewise rather than generating the plan themselves then I'd agree with you. Contrariwise, if the robots had just been left with an item just out of reach, a directive to grasp the item, and a stick left lying in reach, and had come up with a plan to use the stick as an arm extension on their own then that would be a different matter.
That depends on what you mean by "individual consciousness." Unitarity seems to be one of the inherent characteristics of human consciousness, which is the only unambiguous example of consciousness that we have. Humans can only consciously attend to one thing at a time. We don't know whether this is a necessary feature of consciousness or merely a human limitation (because we only have one data point), but my money is on the former.
This is not to say that consciousness could not exist in a physically distributed system like an ant colony, but the colony would still perceive itself as "an individual" (whatever that could possibly mean in that case).
Consciousness as commonly defined is kind of a low bar, companies for example could be said to be conscious and meet most definitions that doin't boil down to is Human. But, frankly we already have a word for 'Human' so defining such things in purely human terms seems pointless.
More intriguing certainly, more accurate is debatable. Robots can be (and have been) programmed to use tools. That doesn't mean they are conscious. Ants are very sophisticated farmers [1], but they almost certainly are not conscious.
[1] http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/ants-are-destroying-y...