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I know this is quite an old post - prescient let's call it - but it had a lot of resonance for me...I've been worrying about AI ethics on a much more micro scale. More how do we at least consider the risk of doing harm while experimenting with AI systems (some thoughts here if you're interested: https://medium.com/@thorn-thee-valiant/the-persona-engine-a-registered-philosophical-simulation-study-94b09fa32f98).
Your concern about suffering echoes that of Thomas Metzinger and the nod towards animal rights and slavery seems relevant. I had always thought that the core message of films like Blade Runner, Westworld and their ilk was that the irony is baked in. The directors, authors etc take it as read that these entities are worthy of moral concern but they're operating in a world that doesn't treat them that way. But many modern debates about AI seem so essentialist that it's redolent of old ideas towards animals or slaves - that they can never be worthy of moral concern by definition. So it's important that at least some people are raising the question of (a) what would it mean if AI systems could suffer, and (b) how do we ameliorate that risk.