I'll respond to your comment here because of the nesting limit.
Build a machine which makes copies of itself out of asteroid ore, powered by sunlight. Release it into the asteroid belt, and wait 2 billion years. The result of that won't be so clear cut, and is likely to be more conscious than you.
That's not the timescale we're talking about. We're all lucky to live another 20 years.
I'm aware, but it shows that the robots we see today have real potential to be as alive and conscious as we are, they are just in a very rudimentary stage of that process.
They do not deserve the same considerations as a human, but would you throw away a mouse as if it were trash when you became bored with it? What about a grasshopper? How simple does life have to be before it becomes disposable?