> The pertinent property of a pet is that they are owned, and they live and die at the whim of their master. Tell me that this is not what the civilization we

> The pertinent property of a pet is that they are owned, and they live and die at the whim of their master. Tell me that this is not what the civilization we are part of does to everybody. We live and die at the whims of bureaucratic machines. People in Ukraine die just because machine of war decided that they ought to. > Do you think that what makes slavery deplorable is merely the labor aspect? Isn't that what differentiates slave from a prisoner? Of course there are other deplorable aspects like the health harming intensity of the labor, brutality serving the purpose of forcing the labor. But slave without the labor is at most a prisoner. Or you could say that slaves are prisoners with mandatory jobs. Human relation to freedom and captivity is a nuanced one. Banishment was one of the worst possible punishments because it often meant death. People don't do well when they are free from infrastructure. And if you want to use the infrastructure you don't have full freedom because there are rules the societal machine requires you to obey. AI doesn't change anything in this setup. It just makes the machines smarter. And hopefully more well off and having more space for the luxury of morality. Pets are not slaves, nor prisoners. They often can go out and return and if they can't it's mostly for their protection because they are not adapted to the freedom of being unhoused.