I also think that general AIs will not be the kind that simulates brains.

But I think its wrong to tie consciousness to the hardware its running on. Consciousness is a property of the software. I think its fallacious to postulate a difference between an intelligence that runs on brains and an intelligence that runs on other machines if the difference can't be observed.

And yes I would be worried that a robot might suffer if it is sufficiently advanced to exhibit the same behaviour as, say, a cat.