> I reject your axiomatic assertion that AI is a living thing

It was your original assertion but it's 100% irrelevant anyway. I argue against your logic regardless of whether it is alive or not.

> we are under no obligation to entertain each object as though it were conscious unless some legal rights have been established for it

We went through this during slavery. There were no rights, and then people realized there should be rights.

And "each object" is a straw man. We were talking about beings to which the concept of cruelty and slavery could apply, like an animal. The assumption was that it could be the case with LLMs too. Without that assumption we should not be having this argument.