“THE LIFECYCLE OF SOFTWARE OBJECTS”

The story about the nature of consciousness follows Ana & Derek as they raise digital creatures (Jax, Marco & Polo) from pets to almost-human intelligent creatures.

The core idea is that consciousness can not be programmed but evolved: "it takes at least twenty years of steady effort to produce a useful person, & I see no reason that teaching an artificial being would go any faster." AI needs to be raised like children. Being a parent raises some heavy issues: what is love and how do we get it? Why does the world contain evil pain and loss? How can we discover dignity? Who is in power and why?

if we want to give an AI any responsibilities then it will need good answers to these questions. That's not going to happen by loading the works of Kant into the computer's memory.