Exactly - consciousness, to me, simply has everything to do with self-preservation. The platform (a body as we humans define it) is just one variable. A machine could, arguable, act in a way little different from, in fact possibly better than, a human might. I suppose we may see, and possibly sooner than we might like.

The desire to remain active, involved and 'alive' - that's the point of most anything. I suspect that the detection of threat is a big variable in programming AI to be self-preserving. Once a system can effectively identify and successfully deal with any/every threat to its existence, I guess watch the fuck out.