STRONG agreement! I think if we'd found a way to co-exist with Neanderthals, we'd be faring much better with toeing around the edge of the great filter of Fermi's paradox[1]. The contemporary ability ("contemporary" as far as life history goes) to craft stories about human vs animal/nature has stimulated catastrophic growth and "othering" of nature in really significant way. Every religion and belief system would be affected by having a "bridge" intelligence closer to our own. (Not saying we'd have a history free of shameful treatment though.)
While recklessly creating new intelligent life is ethically nauseating to me, I also fear the status quo of NOT needing to consider these dilemmas. In my mind it's a clash between my visceral horror (of creating an intelligent being that is not human) vs a very real fear of global human extinction (of continuing on our destructive track without hard, global-scale conversations about our relationship/responsibility/entanglement with animals and other forms of life)
Related: a past comment on article "Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25104373
While recklessly creating new intelligent life is ethically nauseating to me, I also fear the status quo of NOT needing to consider these dilemmas. In my mind it's a clash between my visceral horror (of creating an intelligent being that is not human) vs a very real fear of global human extinction (of continuing on our destructive track without hard, global-scale conversations about our relationship/responsibility/entanglement with animals and other forms of life)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Great_Filter