Yes, but it depends greatly on how you define "self-conscious" and "intelligent". As a professor researching AI, we need "working definitions" (meaning not universally accepted by all) of these terms. We call them "working" definitions so that we can work with them and know when we have achieved them and what we mean when we talk about them.
Intelligence
I regard Intelligence is an ability to internally use "models" and "simulations" to figure out a coherent picture of what is not self-evident or instantly visible. That may be figuring out something historical (tectonic plates used to be together in Pangaea; or a victim was choked to death), something in the present ("this patient has tuberculosis", or "that column of smoke can only be due to a house or car fire at the base of it"), or something in the future ("This pit is disguised well enough that deer will not detect it", or in an unfamiliar grocery store, "the milk is probably in that refrigeration section at the back left").
You do this with mental models, which are an abstraction of rules and facts you have learned. They can be different from person to person because of what they learned and how; but in general we all have a model of how grocery stores work, and some basic navigation ideas about them: they have some area for fresh vegetables, and for deli, usually near the meat section; another section for dairy. The candy is not generally beside the medicine or the cat litter or the tin foil. Aisles are wide enough for carts. There are carts available!
Part of the model operation is able to identify "hidden" likelihoods: Suppose you are unconscious, and wake up in an empty room with a nondescript door. You don't know where you are. You walk through that door, into something that looks like a grocery store: How do you know? Because enough visual model parameters were met that the neurons used to make up your mental model of a grocery store fired; while the hundreds of other models in your brain found inconsistencies and did not fire: It isn't an office, or a car garage, or a home, or an amusement park, or a movie theater or a police station or restaurant or barber shop or movie set or space station or casino: Given the visual cues, the Model most consistent with those cues and with the fewest negative clues (things that do not belong) is that of a grocery store.
So you will conclude you are in a grocery store and because of that expect to find the other parts of a grocery store specified by your internal model, even if you cannot see them: There must be a cash register somewhere, near the front so people can leave with their groceries. There will be only one such front on one side of the building; if you walk the perimeter you should get there.
That is "intelligence", good predictions of reality (what really happened, what is really happening now, or what is really going to happen) based on clues. It does not require emotion. AI makes good predictions about what the stock market is going to do in the next milliseconds, minutes, days or weeks or years, with stunning success. It doesn't have any emotion about it; the only requirement is to be correct far more often than it is incorrect.
Remember, this is my working definition of intelligence; other researchers or laymen may have their own ideas: Mine is chosen because I think it is clear and testable and measurable, which are traits I need in order to do research that is more than guesswork and pointless circular philosophical reasoning. The same applies to the definitions below, so I will stop repeating it.
Self Consciousness
I will break this into two things; self awareness and consciousness.
Self Awareness
This is having an internal model of yourself. It is an abstraction, don't forget. But it means you have an ability to predict what you will like, what you find boring or exciting, what you find frightening, or pleasurable, or what angers you. You can predict the physical feats you are capable of doing, or not doing. And the mental feats: Whether you can solve differential equations, whether you can draw, whether you do well at Trivia puzzles, whether you can hold your liquor. Differences between your mental model of yourself and reality let you know when you are sick, weak, in pain, or damaged: If your left knee is not working correctly (say buckling), that is because it is not meeting your expectations built on experience of how your left knee works: Where are those expectations encoded? What neurons are firing to tell the rest of your brain something un-expected transpired (or failed to transpire)? In your mental model of your body and how it works, which your brain has been learning (and updating) throughout your life. (It is updated because bodies change gradually over time, and sometimes drastically through amputation, spinal cord injury, surgery, or other disabling accidents).
Self Awareness is having a model of yourself in the world that can be used for planning your actions in the world. You do that with mental simulations using many other models: For example, "If I go to the game, it will be fun. I won't get in without a ticket; I must buy a ticket. I could walk, but it is too far, so I will need a ride, so I will need to arrange for Uber. I must be sure to bring my cell phone. Now let's see, what will I wear..." and so on. Every one of these thoughts is triggering a simulation. The fact that they are in a chain leads us into Consciousness.
Consciousness.
The human brain has (on most recent scientific data I have read) about 150 relatively large clusters; each cluster is dense in connections; and then the clusters themselves have communicating parts. Kind of like cities and towns connected by a highway system. There are hints this pattern is fractal; meaning each cluster may well be composed of sub-clusters with their own kind of highway: Like a City can be a cluster connected to an Interstate Highway system, but the city itself has main thoroughfares and its own internal transportation system, ranging from one-lane alleys to six lane elevated highways.
The reason I say "hints" is the best measuring equipment available for this kind of work is still not exactly high-resolution; and neurons are cells, microscopically tiny.
If we look at this in terms of predictive models; the brain may be capable of many billions of such models; particularly because we use componentization: We model "a wheel" pretty simply, whether it is on a baby carriage, bicycle, motorcycle, car, truck, aircraft, tank, bulldozer, etc. For each of the more specific instances we just have additions to the idea of "wheel". The first three can all have "spoke" wheels; but we don't expect to see those on an aircraft or a tank. What we do expect to see is something round that rolls and turns on some sort of axle and is sturdy enough to support a load. The neurons that decide if something is a wheel or not a wheel or just looks like a wheel or is a broken wheel can inform many thousands of models.
So my working definition of Consciousness is pretty simple; a kind of random walk through the brain. A train of thought is these different models informing each other, endlessly. It is the communication of different parts of the brain; we get ideas, pursue them for awhile, they lead to other things and eventually decisions about what to do. The body can DO things; whether that is changing the channel or turning the spare bedroom into an art studio.
Consciousness is simply this train of thought, of one "state of mind" leading to another "state of mind". This may be goal directed; there can be an objective. I want to solve an equation, the models in my brain that do that work interpret the equation, characterize it, recall a solution path, and start trying things.
Consciousness does not require language; as many people assume. I believe internal speech is actually something that happens in the wake of thought: A model is invoked that knows what to do with second order differential equations. One of the connections in that model is its label, "Second Order Differential Equation", like a hashtag. It is after this model is activated that it activates the (internal) speech center and we (internally) "hear" the words.
Language can be useful here; those words (that hashtag) are each themselves a model that can be physically connected to several other models that then get activated too (e.g. there are many techniques for solving such equations; so they all should weigh in on how well they fit the equation in question).
This is what I think consciousness is; this flow of activations of millions of models; often with language elements in their wake, and our mental models of grammar and word choice forming actual sentences we "hear" as an internal dialogue of questions, answers, arguments, quibbles and eventually (perhaps) conclusions about what to DO.
Conclusion
Yes, using workable definitions, a machine can be intelligent, self aware, and conscious. This does not require emotions at all; it doesn't have to want anything, fear anything, love anything, or feel pain or joy. It can have a goal or objective; including an ongoing goal (say helping others).
It also does not have to be more intelligent than humans, or more powerful than humans. It also does not have to be insane and out to kill humans or take over the world or anything like that. Just like a human, it does not have to get trapped in "logic" puzzles that imply it should kill all humans or end all life: Like humans, it can simply reject outlandish conclusions out of hand no matter what logic led to them.
