Technology
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I could say that they experience negative feedback when given a thumbs down and positive feedback when given a thumbs up which is something akin to a conscious experience.
the part that presumes we are special is the notion that not everything that reacts to something is conscious, in philosophy there is a notion of a philosophical zombie that does all the things a conscious being does and is therefore indistinguishable from one but doesn't have any internal experience. I believe that the ability to react IS a conscious experience and that such a being is impossible because consciousness does nothing and means nothing beyond an ability to react to stimulus. We say computers aren't conscious, but they react to stimulus if setup properly, I ask how that's meaningfully different. You'll say "because in decides if we care whether it suffers" to which I say we shouldn't decide whether we care about the suffering of a being on the basis of something that has no physical or measurable ramifications on the world and should use a better, well defined framework. This same line of thinking lead people to the notion that there is no such thing as insect suffering and is just a bad way of looking at the world.
You could also say a thermostat experiences negative feedback when you turn it down. That's not really a meaningful definition.
Also, the notion of philosophical zombie is indeed absurd. Dennett dismantles this idiocy in Consciousness Explained quite thoroughly. My view that consciousness requires having a system that's capable of introspection in a sense that it is able to observe its own internal patterns and to be aware of itself. Such a system would obviously not be restricted to humans or even biology. There is absolutely no reason why a neural network implemented on a different substrate could not be conscious. You're making quite a lot of assumptions about what I'll say, while ignoring what I'm actually saying here.