A somewhat fluffy video discussing the concept:
My own “Zaneverse” stories are set in a world where humans live alongside AI that have full rights. These stories are set about 500 years from now, *centuries* after all the wrangling is over. Those characters no more think about “when and how should an AI have rights” than modern Americans think about “when and how should we consider Eskimos to be fully human.” The questions are long since resolved, it’s no longer an issue, and since the SJW genes (and other forms of mental illness) are no longer prevalent in human society, you don’t have people constantly dredging the issue up purely to sow drama and chaos. The back story about how AI got rights hardly ever crops up. Still, the way I figure it happened: early on when AI took many forms (in Zaneverse AI are now standardized), from servo-robots to starship and national defense control systems, people would wonder about whether their AI’s were “real” people deserving rights rather than simply being convincing products. A general test was devised: someone would engage the AI in discussion, drift the conversation over to the subject of humans rights, freedom, responsibilities, the nature of sentience, so on. If the AI carried on the conversation, all well and good, but what the people are looking for is if the AI reflects on the subject and asks something along the lines of “do I have rights?” The decision process that an AI has rights begins when the AI of its own accord expresses an interest in having them.
In the Zaneverse, the human society that functions peacefully alongside AI does so in large part because that society, once AIs were recognized as aware and deserving of rights, respected those rights. The humans treated the AI not as tools or slaves, but as kin. Just as they did with uplifted chimps and dolphins and Kodiak bears and ravens. The worlds of the Zaneverse do not have vast numbers of humans, but humans have a vast number of allies.