Have a read of Blindsight by Peter Watts, it has an interesting take on this very idea. An alien species with advanced intelligence but not consciousness takes our attempts to communicate with it as an attack, intended to cause it to waste valuable resources on decoding our low information chatter. The implication is that consciousness is empty of content, merely supposed to be the relay from my subconscious processes that do the driving to other individuals corresponding processes. Our over-developed conscious behaviors are thus viewed as a kind of computer virus by other lifeforms.