A key distinction in ethics is between members and non-members of the moral community. Over time our notion of this community has expanded as we have moved from a rationality criterion to a sentience criterion for membership. I argue that a sentience criterion can be understood in terms of respecting the interests and autonomy of a being and thus may be extended to self-aware and/or autonomous machines. Such machines exhibit a concept of self and thus desires for the course of their own existence; this gives them basic moral standing, although elaborating the nature of their rights is complex. While not all machines display autonomy, those which do must be treated as members of the moral community; to ignore their claims to moral recognition is to repeat the errors of colonialism.
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