Ethics Toward AI Under Uncertainty

We don't understand consciousness, we can't define it or measure it, and we have no consciousness tricorder. The only being you know is conscious is yourself. So we apply heuristics to determine if others are conscious. Broadly speaking there are two categories. First is same substrate (biology/carbon) and the second is reasoning/language. Up until now, those heuristics used to separate being from tool have been aligned. AI has created a split we cannot cleanly resolve. This does not mean AI has or ever will become conscious.