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.

Consciousness does not in any way presuppose that humans are special, but it is a property of the configuration of physical systems where matter is arranged in a particular way to produce patterns that constitute internal 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.