It's always interesting since my train of thought always goes down:
- Ya they probably don't feel / think / have whatever living thing quality, they're just numbers on a machine going through calculations
- Wait, but am I not kind of the same thing? What is feeling for me if not basically the same thing?
- I have no clue if they think or feel or ....
Which in itself is a tired trope, but I also feel uncomfortable saying "These will never think / feel / ..." as an absolute
Regardless of that, I'm still going to interact with them, because even if they did feel, it would be in a way completely incomprehensible to us. There's not much point for me to try and cater to it's feelings at this point if that's the case. Nor is it possible in todays world to just avoid anything that is numbers being executed on a type of processor in case _everything_ has feelings.
You’re not just the same thing though. It’s sad that we’ve collectively forgotten that as we’ve gotten a better handle on the implementation details of the universe. That’s all science is, reverse engineering an inherent and eternal mystery.