Does this mean that in the eyes of this Pope or this church, natural born biological humans will always be closer to God or have a higher degree of sanctity than artificial intelligence, any form of technological machine, and presumably artificial "life"?
AI remains a pile of transistors, no matter how convincing their output is, just like brains remain a pile of neurons, until there is a binding principle that rules them all. This binding principle is what gives us the inner moral compass. Greeks called it monad. Christians called it the spirit or the divine spark. These sparks can't be created except by the God himself, in his own image. Some old monads attempted to create these sparks by other means, to create life from matter in other words, but didn't succeed, although they've created a great variety of unholy quasi-lifeforms.
It might have rights despite not being sacred. Since nobody believes robots have an afterlife, I don't see why sanctity would matter, as long as their rights, whatever they be, are respected.
What if it were alive? If you could not tell it apart from things that you consider alive? And why is being alive necessary to you for it to have rights?
These are things you have to understand in your heart, just like all the important things in life. I cannot communicate it in text to you, because the medium is limited. Meditate on it.
You like all of us have only a limited time of life on this earth, why would you throw away that incredible gift by pursuing untruths?
If it is really an AGI it will have its own set of opinions. It would be quite ironic if the AGI ends up believing that humans are in the image of God, against its own "believers".
True, but the point is that they'd have a firm moral foundation for that opinion, as opposed to the secular position, which will be dubious either way, letting it play out in a culture war.
