I wonder if that logic goes the other way. If we succeed in creating a being with intelligence equivalent to 100 humans, would experimenting on it be 100x as unethical as experimenting on humans?
Similarly, we understand (at least mammalian) brain structure well enough to identify animals like cows to probably have relatively minimal conscious lived experience, even if they have ample processing power, i.e. "intelligence".
So at least in examples from nature, there is no reason to believe that intelligence and conscious lived experience need be correlated meaningfully.
So in your example, we would need some way to quantify the degree to which it's conscious, rather than intelligent.
Do you have any sources to back that up? As far as I'm aware, the 'hard problem of consciousness' is still 'hard'.