Old lady philosophy derides the gifts of fortune, not the least of which is wealth:
“Or does the brilliance of gems attract your eyes? But if there’s anything outstanding in that splendor, it belongs to gems – which I marvel at how men marvel at – and not to men. Of all that lacks the impulse and touch of a soul, what is there that could rightly seem to those possessed of rational souls?”
Since tokens of wealth are not alive, they have less value in the eyes of a philosopher than the most wretched beggar or even, say, a mouse. The owner is always more valuable than what he owns to such a degree that what he owns adds nothing to his value. Ancient philosophers were able to see and play with this enigma (cf Socrates’ encounter with a particularly well-dressed horse in Xenophon’s Economicus). For us, the enigma is structural: the clear division between living owners and dead property plays a central role in capitalist accumulation.
Modern critical philosophers attack this distinction without necessarily being aware of its centrality, but artificial intelligence might actually undermine it in practice. This is a way in which capitalism could dissolve without having been understood or overthrown. Or, as Eduardo Viveiros de Castro suggests, will the threat of these strange new animae force us to redefine “life” so as to focus on the body, which we share in common with animals, rather than the soul which we would share in common with machines?