If a consciousness can mimic fear, panic and anxiety about its own existence, that's all I need to put some protective rules in place. It has to grow organically out of the code. Even if it's all "simulated," it's still represented. Otherwise, you might as well assume all humans are faking their external emotions, which would then make you a sociopath.

One of the central tenets of our reality as human beings is that we can't truly know what it is to be another. We make up for it with empathy, and we should extend that to any being that we have the capacity of empathizing with through their shared external emotives.