Regardless of the veracity and accuracy of any of it, it left me thinking about what it must be like to be in a state of consciousness but have no memories, experiences, instincts, or senses. Which led down a rabbit hole of ethical questions, including whether such research is ethical at all.
The whole thing feels sticky and murky. Can we even know if our creation is conscious? Can we design it such a way that it does or does not have free will? If it is a slave, if we add a reward center to its brain designed such that serving humans would give it its happiest life does that resolve the issue or make it worse?
Does the fact that the parents don’t, with intent and personally, inflict the pain allow them to abdicate that they are the root cause of the pain even being possible in the first place.
If you maximize pleasure as a first priority, you can either say that "As long as human life is in general good, I should make the choice to create one" or "As long as a human life produces any good, I should make the choice to create one".
This gets into an interesting sub-point with respect to animal experiments - most people would argue that animal experiments produce some good (Advances in human health). Moral critiques of animal experiments, thus, can rely on either "Hurting animals is bad" (Negative utilitarianism, more or less) or "The pain we create does not outweigh the value they produce". The later point is particularly poignant because the species experiencing the pain does not receive benefits of the pain (Thus there's no "community sacrifice").
A self-driving car currently doesn't care that it's unpaid and unappreciated. It'd be cruel to make a self-driving car that gets depressed by not getting to go to the beach tomorrow.
Knowingly causing pain against the will of another is violence, so creating a being that will experience pain could be considered the same.
I’ve noticed it especially in Japanese fiction, for some added context.
The AGIs may of course be completely disinterested in cooperating with or helping humans and that would be fully within their rights, they wouldn't owe any of us anything. Even in that case, we may still learn a great deal from creating and observing them. They may also be dangerous but I don't think a free AGI would be any more dangerous than a human in control of an AGI.
Children may be under parental control for a period of time, but describing them as slaves would be fairly silly IMO. The proposed/prospective use cases for AIs tend to be far more in the slavery direction.
Thinking those great minds were wrong is a very very high bar to clear to hold your belief.