Tool Vs. Companion Digital Minds

Humans have two main relations to animals: they are either food or pets. We ban dogs, cats, and horses from use as food in the U.S. We require humane slaughter for most livestock, but not poultry, and require minimizing pain and distress for animals in research, except for rats, mice, and birds bred for research. We let folks use most any species as a pet. This all seems only somewhat about deep principles, as it entrenches many historical accidents.Humanity is rapidly creating a wider range of more capable digital minds (DM), to which we have two main and similar kinds of relations: tools and companions. For DM tools, many want the freedom to to enslave and treat them harshly, such as by deleting them, without attending much to how DMs feel about this. But for DM companions, many want rules requiring respectful treatment, like humans and pets.The obvious prediction here is that both classes of DM will exist, and so we will have rules that distinguish which are tools versus…