As AI systems become more capable, public and scholarly discourse increasingly turns to questions such as: Can machines be conscious? and Can AI be designed to align with human values for ethical action?—which force us to question what it means to be human. I will present a perspective not seen much in the current discourse on the topic by incorporating principles from development, evolution, embodiment, and postmetaphysics. The discussion of AI proceeds through considerations of intelligence, agency, interiority, consciousness, empathy, care, and identity. I will argue that current LLM-based AI systems can not, in principle, be aligned to human values and ethics, and that one way to actually create aligned AI systems is to imbue their primitive building blocks with “proto-gratitude.” I will also argue that addressing how and whether people *think* AIs are conscious is more urgent than determining whether they could be conscious.