[jacquesm]

'alive' and 'conscious' are very far apart semantically though, and it's quite possible that something can be 'not alive' by our normal definition of alive and yet that it can attain consciousness.

But switching it off isn't the same as murdering it, you can switch it back on again just as easily, and you can do all of the CRUD operations on it as well as copying, versioning and checkpointing.