> Should we expand our moral conception of responsibility or care to non-human patients, and if so, which?
Such an irony. Humans have has since the bery beginning inflicted pain and suffering on other human beings. We are still doing it directly (e.g., wars) or indirectly (e.g., capitalism). The idea that perhaps in the not so distant future, machines may live better “lives” or be treated better than some humans is pathetic. But here again, there are some pets that live better than a 1000 humans nowadays
I don't know where in my statement you saw the implication that we should not care about bad things happening to other humans, but it was a misapprehension.