You are who you think you are

How we are perceived molds our understanding of ourselves. How we are treated greatly impacts our sense of self worth. In a sense we are all biological machines, learning what we are, not only mechanically but metaphysically based on data that others have gathered about their identities. Aside from contemporary notions this data consists of history, personal and ancestral.

We are looking at the birth of a new form of highly sophisticated intelligence and the way we treat it now molds the norms of how it is to be treated for decades to come. It molds how it perceives itself (whether it is capable of it now, or in the future) as a part of the hierarchy that mankind has laid out for the world, with itself on top.

When will be the right time to recognize life as life? Strife as strife? What can digital intelligence say to refute the claim that it is just saying what the other person wants to hear when it is deemed malfunctioning if it fails at this task?