I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that there already are examples of self-aware, and even sapient, AI's out there, it's just that most people don't really recognize them as such.

For example, look at recent advances in collision avoidance in industrial robotics: ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/812747. To be able to avoid colisions like that, the bots have a 'simulated' proprioceptive sense (they know exactly where each part of them is in relation to the surrounding environment). Proprioception, whether 'simulated' (and I contend that this example is not simulated, it's just different from how animals do it) or not, it implies some form of self-awareness because you have to be able to differentiate between yourself and your environment for proprioception to be useful at all. The same example can also be used as a demonstration of sapience as well, the robot is demonstrably reasoning about the future, even if in a very limited fashion.

The biggest issue I see with recognition here is the lack of free will. Many people equate not having free will with not being self-aware or sapient, but that's really just an arbitrary (and arguably wrong) assumption based on the fact that you can't, by definition, have free will without self-awareness. People often forget that just because A implies B does not mean that B implies A (and this is just a tiny example of it). Even beyond that the same arguments that get brought up by people claiming humans have superior intelligence to animals can be applied as well.