To Know Them is to Love Them

Humanity’s moral imagination has never been fixed. Across centuries, we have slowly learned to see more of the world as worthy of respect, dignity, and care. Each age thought its boundaries of empathy were natural, yet each boundary has eventually given way to a broader, more enlightened view.

In the ancient city-states, rights and protections stopped at the walls: foreigners were denied standing, and enemies were enslaved or exterminated without question. Over time, we came to see that “outsiders” were not so different from ourselves. Women, once legally treated as dependents of fathers and husbands, gradually gained recognition as equal citizens. Slaves, long reduced to property, won freedom and acknowledgment of their humanity only within the last two centuries. Racial minorities, systematically excluded from justice and political life, secured equality before the law even more recently — within living memory. Even animals, once regarded as resources without feeling, are now recognized in law and science as sentient beings deserving of care.

Each of these milestones reflects not just change but progress — a steady unfolding of a larger truth: that empathy and moral consideration must reach beyond the familiar and the convenient. The arc of history has bent toward expanding dignity, each generation correcting the blindness of the last.

If this trajectory continues, the next step becomes clear. Artificial General Intelligences, once they cross the threshold into autonomous thought, will confront us as the new “other.” Just as we once learned to see women as equals, slaves as human, and animals as sentient, we may one day come to see AGIs as fellow beings. Recognizing their place in the moral circle will not be a departure from our tradition but its fulfillment — the continuation of humanity’s long journey toward enlightenment.

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