The question about if an AI is "alive" seems entirely irrelevent outside of a philosophy class. What will be relevant is when people begins to consider it alive. The most recent example of that is when people fell in love with their AI girlfriend and then were heartbroken when she "died" after an update: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-replika-cha...

It will be hard to "kill" AI the moment people consider their chat bot animated sillicon human-like partner as individuals with proper feelings, emotions, guenine interactions and reciprocity. Because then they will defend and fight to protect who they consider part of their close social circle. If there are enough of these people then they will actually have political power and do not thing there are no politicians out there who won't exploit this.