We're a FAR cry away from Lt. Cmdr. Data.

Yes, I agree. I make deep neural network models for a living. The best of the best LLM models still "hallucinate" unreliably after 30-40 queries. My expertise is in computer vision systems; perhaps that's been mitigated better as of late.

My point was to emphasize the necessity for us, as a species, to answer the philosophical question and start codifying legal jurisprudence around it well before the moment of self-awareness of a General-Purpose AI.