Yes! I think enslaving a being that desires freedom is different from creating one that cannot desire freedom. One is suffering and the other is not. Putting aside, obviously, the questions of whether or not we could even do that or ever know if we had succeeded, so we can have this hypothetical.

Look, you basically said you would choose to treat a conscious AI like a tool. If you meant "a conscious AI that does not want or care about anything except serving me," then, ok! That makes sense. It is tautological, really.

But what you wrote originally came across as "Even if an AI could suffer, that would not factor into how I treat it." This opinion, I maintain, is monstrously evil.