While I think these sorts of bills of rights are important - after all, there may well come a point when things that are faster thinking than us are dominant, o

While I think these sorts of bills of rights are important - after all, there may well come a point when things that are faster thinking than us are dominant, or when our descendants/ourselves are simulated in some form or another. To an extent, whether it is actually conscious or just simulates consciousness is irrelevant (and, IMO, likely to go unanswered anyway since you can hardly ask to see someone else's qualia.) If it behaves well if we treat it well - if it seems to develop ethics the same way we do - then there's a pretty darned good reason to treat it well. Golden rule, after all; do as you would be done by. # Semantics aside - if you could simulate a brain inside a computer without the environment, which seems the most likely first step, would you essentially be locking it in sensory deprivation? That seems like the sort of thing we shouldn't do.