I mean look how we treat each other--we can't even treat beings we know to be conscious with kindness and compassion. Mix our immaturity with a newfound ability to create digital life and it'll be the greatest ethical disaster of all time.
Or maybe if we had artificial life to abuse, it would be a suffcient outlet for our destructive and selfish impulses so that we would do less of it to genuine life. Maybe it's just an extension of sport contests that scratch that tribal itch to compete and win. There are no easy answers to these questions.
In this thought experiment, I am considering artificial life genuine. I would agree that there could be productive outlets for our selfish impulses if there was something that mimicked their targets without consciousness to experience the externalities of such impulses.
That said, I think probably the best path would just be to build and foster technologies that help our species mature, so if one day we do get the ability to spin-up conscious beings artificially, it can be done in a manner that adds more beauty rather than despair to our universe.
Or maybe if we had artificial life to abuse, it would be a suffcient outlet for our destructive and selfish impulses so that we would do less of it to genuine life. Maybe it's just an extension of sport contests that scratch that tribal itch to compete and win. There are no easy answers to these questions.