I think that as we automate more things we can comfortably afford to model more beings as being worthy of our consideration. People of the past divided humanity

I think that as we automate more things we can comfortably afford to model more beings as being worthy of our consideration. People of the past divided humanity into subcategories they could more easily rationalise the exploitation of. We do the same to other parts of the biosphere. I'm not saying the two things are of equal ugliness, but I think they exist on the same continuum.