Are you sure that neurons are a precondition for consciousness? I'm not arguing a glass fo water is conscious, but that argues against computers ever being conscious because they also have no neurons.
thats true, I guess theyre not required for consciousness but thats how it evolved here on Earth. I suppose all you would need is to be able to have a mental map of the world, however it happens
I think computers could be conscious (whatever that means) if they modelled living minds to a sufficiently high degree of precision. I do not see why the physical substrate would matter.