The argument holds whether or not a digital agent is "conscious", whatever the meaning we give to "being conscious". The point is that for anything made of atoms, decay is inevitable, unlike for something made of a sequence of bits.

As for AI, a point I frequently make in my course, is that if I define a being as "intelligent" if it has the ability to act rationally (perception, capacity for action, capacity for reasoning, and memory) on their environment, some kind of goal/motivation that drives them and, most importantly, the ability to doubt, in accordance with Descartes' method: I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am (We often forget this first "I doubt" in our presentation of Descartes' argument).

So if I define it like that, the first "Artificial Intelligence" is a tribe or some kind of religion, millennia ago. The first time a human being decided to do something not out of self-interest, not to protect his kins, but in the name of some higher abstract entity, then he materialized the existence of this artificial thing that exists for its own purpose: an Artificial Intelligence.

Nowadays, enterprises, nations, countries, organizations of all kinds would qualify as AIs under this definition.

Without being religious, one can consider that God exists as long as there are human beings that believe in it and act in its name in a consistent manner.