It's hard to usefully speculate, but I don't think it's right to imply that it's an unimportant question either. Even putting aside the more out-there scenarios

It's hard to usefully speculate, but I don't think it's right to imply that it's an unimportant question either. Even putting aside the more out-there scenarios, we don't want to look back in 2100 and say "oops, AIs have had qualia for the past 25 years, and we've been real jerks to them".