Humanlike: A Defense of AI Rights -- Chapter Zero

In July, I began circulating a draft of my next book, Humanlike: A Defense of AI Rights. I set it aside for a couple of months to get some distance on it while it accumulated comments. I'll soon dive back in for a fresh round of revisions. Comments are still very welcome! As a teaser, here's the current draft of Chapter Zero: The Cambrian Explosion – how slow, how subtle! About 540 million years ago, in the Cambrian period, most of the major animal phyla arose – arthropods (becoming insects, spiders, crustaceans), mollusks (becoming snails, octopuses, oysters), annelids (becoming worms, leeches), chordates (becoming salmon, sharks, our favorite vertebrates, and eventually us). The world diversified. Evolution hustled. But compared to what might come, that was a languid stroll. Now in the Anthropocene we stand at the beginning, possibly, of a change much faster and more radical. If it’s possible to create artificial entities, through computer programming or bioengineering or a mix, who…