Humans like to think they're special somehow. So they need a way to define a human that excludes everything else.
And that's sentience!
Diogenes with a chicken "Behold, a human"
Whoops. Don't want them pesky animals in there. Let's try something else.
It's intelligence!
Diogenes with a LLM "Behold, a human"
Whoops. Well then...
It's creativity!
Well, what's that?
It's the ability to imagine whatever you want and then make that.
... Okay that sounds cool. Look what advances in AI enabled me to make.
Wait now billions of people can express their creativity and become competition. Let's dehumanize them: "you didn't make that, the machine made it, and the definition of creativity is now drawing skill."
Diogenes with a diffusion model "Behold, a human"