Kids can feel like they're losing a real friend if they lose a stuffed animal. What's the progress on making teddy bears people?

Small kids don't have much power, and parents know that it's just a phase.

But I'm not expecting AIs to be declared people any time soon. I just think it will become harder to treat them purely as replaceable objects.

Fair, mostly joking. The cynic in my says the opposite happens and these technologies make it even easier for systems to treat actual people as replaceable objects.

Eventual, but needed. Kids feel pretty isolated during various pandemic lockdowns and maybe their parents have a lot of childfree friends, so they'll need companions, more than just a toy, even if technology marches on so quickly they'll be outdated soon enough. One day, you'll hear that supertoys last all summer long.

Consider that the only thing stopping us from building the teddy bear in Spielberg's AI is a suitable power source.

Reminds me of the time my son's teacher gave a lesson on fire safety telling the kids to not take anything with them and just get yourself out quickly. He realized the implication would be that his entire plushie collection would burn and after that he was inconsolable for the rest of the day.