This is my favorite subject.
I'm willing to accept that not everything is conscious. I just don't know where to put the boundary, and that's OK. Is this plate I just ate an omelet off conscious? No. The fork? No. My cat? Not the same as me but yes conscious. Doesn't wonder if her life means anything but conscious. A lizard? Ask Michael Tomasello. An ant? No. The whole colony? Well...
What is consciousness for? To protect us. Because we are alive and life does that. It protects itself. The immune system protects us. Because both the immune and the nervous system are products of biological evolution, it's not a stretch to say the nervous system is a speeded up immune system protecting us from threats that must be dealt with immediately. Along the way it took on a lot of other cool things like planning, agency and wondering about death.
But it's closest analog is the immune system, not a digital computer. So the notion that a digital system can be conscious is not something I assume.