Human Self‑Awareness Before AI Personhood

Before deciding whether to ascribe consciousness or moral status to AI systems, build an operational, empirically grounded account of how human self‑awareness develops and how we detect it. Use that account to create measurable criteria (behavioral, developmental, neural, social) that can guide policy on AI rights, labor use, and welfare rather than relying on rhetoric or anthropomorphism. — Doing so would shift AI personhood debates from metaphysical impasse to evidence‑driven policy, affecting regulation, labor rules, and ethical limits on AI use.