I like the "whitelist" concept you brought up and the example of your cat. I would have liked you to have gone further. Why do we create these whitelists? What are the qualifying factors? I think that would go a long way towards determaining if AI will be considered alive in your view.

I find your claim on self-sufficiency interesting but you don't really justify it in the whitelist framework. A rat is self-sufficient but you justify killing it. Perhapse this is why you call the view "naive". But I think that if you keep going you can come up with something robust