I really don't know why you're getting down-voted. Modern research child development pegs development of self-conscious to the way we are raised. We are born "

I really don't know why you're getting down-voted. Modern research child development pegs development of self-conscious to the way we are raised. We are born "pure animals" only feeling, and develop a self-image and awareness-that we are feeling through interaction with others, in particular the care-giver (.../mother). It is by observing others in our animalistic state, reacting to us, that we develop our capacity for self-reflection -- which still isn't fully there at 4 / 5 years old. To put this point most generously: self-consciousness describes a biosocial process by which animals acquire a recognition of themselves as conscious. The claim is then a machine (an oscillating electric field) does not, nor cannot, participate in biosocial processes. NB. If you redefine consciousness to "seeming as-if conscious" then anything may be trivially true of a machine (or, of anything).