When computers were first assembled, they were massive in size. Some, were as big as a fridge. With time, people that work on computers have done an impressive job in compressing the size of the computer. A big part was reducing the size of the brain of the computer. Now a smart phone has as much, and even more capacity as those large computers. A tiny computer chip has the intelligence and processing capacity which previously could only be in large frame computers. All this improvement and reduction in the physical size of the computer was achieved by men and women, in only a few decades. Basically, what we did was to make something small do, something that only something big could do.
Nature already did that. Over millions of years, nature has compressed systems to minute sizes. Those systems are just as aware as we are.
It is a grave mistake to believe that creatures that are small or minute are not as aware as us or as not as worthy of their life.