I mean look how we treat each other--we can't even treat beings we know to be conscious with kindness and compassion. Mix our immaturity with a newfound ability to create digital life and it'll be the greatest ethical disaster of all time.
Or maybe if we had artificial life to abuse, it would be a suffcient outlet for our destructive and selfish impulses so that we would do less of it to genuine life. Maybe it's just an extension of sport contests that scratch that tribal itch to compete and win. There are no easy answers to these questions.