Ok, I'm back. Here is for my own super swirl on the subject.
Defining life. No matter the definition, many people disagree with it. Adding "artificial" makes one more thing for people to disagree on. Here is the swirl i made for "AI".
Define life but you take out the biological parts. Funny, isn't it?
Most life has an anchor in being a cell with proteins and nucleic acids, with everything building off that. Scientists who theorize possible life elsewhere in the universe view that there may be life that may use another kind of basis. My definition isn't ready to be argued on yet, but that kind of thinking as a starting point is a fun way to go about it. I hate using words like entropy so I gotta figure out a way so I can break it all down to a sixth grade level. I have tomorrow off so maybe then.
What that has to do with AI is this. It puts extraterrestrial life, earth life, and artificial life on a common platform from which to diverge and become more specific depending on environment.
I think your ideas on "rights" are a bit naive, but I don't like that quagmire, and plus, you made another thread for it. So thank you, we skip it.
Figuring out consciousness, haha, well, that takes some time.. I haven't yet figured out a way to express it to my own satisfactory version that is dumbed down to a sixth grade level. That said, it is far easier to attack ideas that you don't agree with then it is to create an idea of your own that you do agree with.
I wrote a bit, and then it hit me that what I was writing sounded very similar to a short poem/story. So I erased what I wrote, and will instead say this. Consciousness, and listening to very learned people go on about it, has lead me to the conclusion that they mostly sound like this story. It is EXTREMELY appropriate, and old fables are fun.
http://www.wordinfo.info/words/index/info/view_unit/1/?letter=B&spage=3P.S. Freemind is a free program and a great way to organize, polarize, and shift though random thoughts, a big step up from skimming through a notepad file.