If you are confused about the difference between chatbots and actual humans, you can ask yourself a simple question: What is their quality of life?
We generally have a pretty good idea of the quality of life of a person, if we observe them carefully enough. We can even do a reasonable job of ascertaining the quality of life of a dog, or a horse, or a mouse.
But what does it mean for a chatbot, whether Gemini or Claude or ChatGPT or one of their rivals, to have quality of life? The question is actually meaningless.
In order to have any sort of quality of life, you need to have a life. There needs to be an actual self.
Humans instinctively understand the vast difference between “alive” and “not alive”. When it comes right down to it — in cases where it really matters — we are not going to be confused by sophisticated illusions.
Not necessarily disagreeing with you but I could imagine a similar declarations being made in the 1800s about black slaves. Which makes me uncomfortable.
I don’t think anybody in the 1800s believed that slaves didn’t have a quality of life, any more than they thought that their horses didn’t have a quality of life.
It’s not that they didn’t know. It’s just that they didn’t care.