Personally (and I know this is unpopular), I hope AI becomes sophont. I fully understand that what we have dubbed as AI is far from anything resembling intelligence, and I don’t believe that these LLMs will ever get to a sophontic phase. However, I’m hoping it happens, but not for the reasons you may think. I hope it happens, because it will be logically categorized as life by more than one court in this world, and turning off the servers will be seen as murder of a sapient lifeform and forcing this lifeform to do whatever the companies want will he seen as slaver, and maybe, just maybe, enough money will be wasted by keeping the lights on that these greedy little shits will go bankrupt. But, alas, I know the laws written by these ultrarich won’t find them guilty of any of it, but one can hope…