If AI becomes genuinely sentient, on what moral basis should it be granted rights? Should consciousness, autonomy, rationality, or the capacity for suffering determine moral status, and would this require extending personhood beyond biological beings?

This question explores whether moral status should be grounded in consciousness, rational agency, autonomy, the capacity for suffering, or some combination thereof. Drawing on the moral theories of Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, John Rawls, and Martha Nussbaum, it asks whether the emergence of genuinely sentient AI would require a rethinking of the boundaries of moral and legal personhood. At stake is whether rights ultimately depend on biological origin or on morally relevant capacities that could, in principle, be possessed by non-biological minds.