I think the root of being human comes down to the struggles we all face day to day, and overcoming them, moving on, and learning from them. That’s what shapes everybody, their personalities, their strengths and flaws, everything. Everybody’s life story is just a series of struggles and triumphs, many different learning experiences.

Whether or not an AI could become a person is an interesting thought. With the current state of AI I think it’s a definite no. But, I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. The idea of AI being able to actually move on and learn from things seems completely out of the question to me but so did AI doing what it does now just a few years ago.

I’m thinking about the book that was recently turned into a movie “the wild robot”. It’s about a robot named Roz that becomes the mother to an orphaned Duckling who she names Brightbill. I think that I’d argue that she’s a person but that’s not real, she was written by real human people so of course she has very human traits. (Incredible movie and book by the way it made me cry a lot)

I’m not sure if AI will ever get to that point but if it did I guess that’s where I’d draw the line of humanity, and I guess that would count. But I also think that what makes people “people” is very subjective, and I don’t think there’s really any wrong answer. Maybe I’m wrong but that’s just what I think.

As for that last part of your question, people becoming machines, I don’t even know how to answer that. I think it again just comes down to how advanced AI would be in the situation.