adventures in space racism

As technology advances, it becomes increasingly crucial that we explore the question of the moral status of Artificial Intelligences (AI). We already have computers with unbelievable computing power, and before long we might have machines far more "intelligent" than any human. We need to know how we ought to act towards such entities to avoid acting immorally. How advanced must machines become before we should treat them as having moral standing - or even as moral persons? Already we have machines with conversational ability nearly equal to a human's - under certain conditions, computers have already passed the Turing Test (or so it is claimed).1 Even if we deny that they have passed quite yet, there is little doubt that they will do so soon.